


The Noble Neverwere

by OneOfThoseThings



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (as always), Creepy Fluff, Deus Ex Machina, Dr Nyarlathotep, Dubious Morality, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, If the TARDIS is already tagged does Deus Ex Machina really even need a separate tag?, Implied Sexual Content, Interfering TARDIS, Non-Linear Narrative, Some Humor, Telepathy, There's an argument to be made that the TARDIS is slightly creepy in this, Time Lords Are Aliens, Timey-Wimey, Vague Descriptions of Conceptual Horror (but no gore or anything), a story told in snippets, but she means well, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 23,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneOfThoseThings/pseuds/OneOfThoseThings
Summary: A timey-wimey fantasy fic in which the TARDIS finds a way to keep Donna Noble, but has a little trouble with the details like anchoring her in time and space.(Canon-compliant in the sense that it's never been explicitly stated that thereisn'ta time-fluid echo of a certain ginger companion haunting the TARDIS.)
Relationships: Donna Noble & The Doctor's TARDIS, Missy & Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor/Donna Noble, Twelfth Doctor/Missy (Implied)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 147





	1. Ryan Sinclair | 2018

**Author's Note:**

> Neverweres (ala the DW wiki): Creatures that should never have existed, built from pieces of evolution that never happened.

* * *

_There’s a ghost in the TARDIS. A strange, ephemeral thing._

_It flickers between planes, untethered. Unbound. It exists outside of memory, on the edges of perception._

* * *

Ryan Sinclair | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 14 October 2018 (The Doctor’s Age: Somewhere in the Range of 2,200 or 4,500,002,200)

Ryan has just found a large room that seems to be just one giant aquarium. This spaceship really is… A Lot. 

Something fuzzy swims by and opens an incongruously large mouth to scoop up what he sure hopes is a plant. It blinks five eyes at him and seems to smile.

Alien fish. Great. 

He turns to check out the other side and almost jumps out of his skin when he finds a red-haired woman standing behind him. “Oi! Where did you come from?!” 

The woman blinks at him. “I’ve always been here.” 

“Sorry, I didn’t know there was anyone else on board.”

She shrugs. “People can’t always see me. I’m still out of phase." She tilts her head like she's thinking that over. "...Will be out of phase... Have been out of phase…?” She seems to get thoroughly distracted by her own grammar. 

“Oh, word? You some sort of time-travelling ghost?”

“Sure,” she says. 

“I’ve never met a ghost before,” he admits. “Course I’ve just met my first aliens. Time-travelling aliens, at that.” He looks around the strange, alien room. “If I’m honest, I thought she was just your run-o-the-mill loony.” 

“'She?'” the ghost prompts.

“The Doctor,” he explains and then hastens to add, “Don’t tell her I called her loony.” 

“Oh, is the Doctor female now?”

“Ya, she seemed a little confused about it,” he says and then clarifies, “Not ‘confused’ confused, y’know. Genuinely confused, like.” 

The ghost makes a similarly confused face. He supposes ghosts and aliens might both have trouble with the concept of gender. Who knows how they work. 

“So… Are there other ghosts?” he asks.

She smiles and something strange happens to her pupils, like they stop having backs for a moment. “Oh, there’s never been another like me.” She winks and her pupils re-solidify. 

“…Mint...” he says. “I’m Ryan by the way.”

“Hello, Ryan.”

“…Should I just call you the ghost?”

“The ghost,” she says. “The ghost,” she repeats, like she’s tasting it. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” Without waiting for an answer she nods. “Yes, that’s me: the Ghost. No that’s not quite― the Shade? …the Phantasm?” She seems to think it over and then claps. “The Spirit!” She grins at him. “You can call me the Spirit.” 

“…Nice to meet you,” Ryan says. 

“Did you all just come aboard?” she asks. “Is that what knocked the TARDIS out of phase?” 

“Yeah― hang on― how do you know that? The Doctor said something about ‘out of phase.’” 

She smiles. “Who do you think got her back _in_ phase?”

“You can pilot this thing?” 

“Course I can,” she says. Like all ghosts know how to pilot time machines. “She and I go way back. In both ways. All ways, really.” 

He’s not sure what any of that means, but she’s already moved on. 

* * *

The Doctor is still fangirling all over her own ship when Ryan comes back out to the control room. 

“Still not sure what set her off,” she says, apparently knowing he’s there just through the back of her alien head. 

“Should we ask the ghost?” Ryan suggests.

The Doctor turns and scrunches one eye at him. “The what?” 

“The ghost,” he says slowly, “Wait, sorry― the spirit… But that’s basically a ghost, yeah? She was a little unclear on the details.” 

“‘She’ who?” 

“The ghost,” he repeats. “The one ghost. Wait, why are you confused? Is there more than one ghost??”

The Doctor tilts her head so far to the side she has to bend at the waist to manage it. “There are, in fact, no ghosts. Anywhere. That’s not a real thing.” 

“Sure, okay,” he says, “But what about the ginger one in the room with all the fish?” 

“ _Which_ room with all the fish?” she asks, and then seems to just shake that all off. “Never mind, just― Did you lot say Sheffield earlier?” 


	2. Mickey Smith | 2006

* * *

_Humans seldom notice spirits, used to excusing movements in the corner of the eye as wayward shadows, tricks of light. But all kinds of things exist in the spaces unseen._

* * *

Mickey Smith | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 6 May 2006 (The Doctor’s Age: 900)

“Stuck on a spaceship in the future; Doctor’s swanned off with some French bint; and Rose is too busy moping to do anything about it. Great. Absolutely flash.” Mickey paces another lap around the galley, grumbling to himself.

This is _exactly_ why he hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.

He nearly runs into the woman who appears between one lap and the next, leaning up against the counter like she’s been there the whole time. 

“Where did you come from?” he yelps. 

The woman looks down at herself and up at him. “Oh, can you see me?”

“Course I can see you,” he says. “What sort of a question is that?”

“People can’t always see me,” she says. “I’m out of phase.” 

“Oh, great,” he says, “Now there’s a ghost. Just what we need.” 

“That’s what the other one said.”

He frowns. “What other one? You mean Rose?” 

“No. Ryan.” She pauses, tilting her head like she’s listening for something. “Or maybe that hasn’t happened yet.”

Oh good, it’s a time-travelling ghost. Even better.

“Listen, lady ghost, you seem very nice, but I’m sort of dealing with something right now.”

The ghost cocks her head the other way. “Want help?”

“What?”

“Do you want help?” she asks more slowly. 

“How are you going to help? Aren’t you a ghost?” 

“Spirit,” she corrects. “I solve problems; I can help.”

“Can you pilot the TARDIS back to 21st century Earth?” he asks, sarcastically, already starting another circuit around the room. 

“Of course,” she says. 

He whips around so quickly he nearly loses his balance. “What? Really?!” 

“Sure.” She shrugs and then pauses. “Is the Doctor hurt?”

“He’s hurtin’ for somethin’…” Mickey grumbles. “No, he’s fine. Just swanned off to pre-revolutionary France for some _Coq au Vin_ if you know what I mean.” 

The ghost’s brows shoot into her ginger fringe. “The _Doctor_?” she asks, like she thinks he might have misheard her. 

“Yeah, what is it with everyone assuming that guy is above all that? He’s a bloke, ain’t he?” 

There’s an indelicate snort from the ghost. “Poor Mickey” 

“Hang on― how do you know my name?” 

“You’re going to do me a great favor one day,” she says. “And you are going to be _brilliant_.” 

“What kind of favor?” he asks, to cover the strange flip in his stomach. He can’t remember the last time someone complimented him outright. 

“You’re going to help me save my Noble self,” she answers, “And I’ll tell you all about it. But first let’s see about your problem.”

Mickey shrugs and launches into the update. It’s not like he has any better ideas at the moment.

“Ok so there were these clockwork robots trapped out here, and I guess they got bored― can’t blame ‘em. So they started punching holes through time, but to this one specific time with this French lady ― bit of a fox. Who knew clockwork aliens had a thing for blondes? And the Doctor went through the fireplace in the side of the ship that actually goes to a little girl’s bedroom in pre-revolutionary France and… Is any of this helping?” 

The ghost blinks at him like she has no idea why he stopped. “Clockwork aliens. Holes punched in space-time. French fox. Got it.” She gestures with one hand for him to continue.

He can’t remember the last time he made it this far through an explanation without anyone interrupting to call him an idiot, but he’s not so much of an idiot that he’d stop now. 

At the end of the story, the ghost takes exactly seventeen seconds to think and then claps her hands. “Let’s see this fireplace.” 

He leads the way, suddenly feeling a lot less like a useless mutt abandoned at the edge of the universe. 

Rose must be off doing a circuit of the portals, because there are no indignant questions when the ghost walks up to the fireplace and starts fiddling with the edges. 

“What are you doing?” he asks. 

She straightens up and then flickers like a static feed in 3D. A moment later she disappears entirely. 

“What―“

In the next breath she’s back, immediately bending down to feel the same space under the ledge. 

“What was that?” he asks, not entirely sure he wants to know. 

She smiles and the cosmos shines in her eyes. “Loose connection. Need to get a man in.”

* * *

Later, Mickey runs into the Doctor in the kitchen ―er, galley― and can’t help but ask “Hey, how _did_ you get back?”

“What?” the Doctor asks, not listening. As usual. 

“From the fireplace. You said the portals all closed when you shut down the rubbish clockwork robots.” 

“Oh,” the Doctor says, “Just lucky, that.”

Mickey frowns and waits for more explanation.

After a moment, the Doctor seems surprised to see him still there. “There was a loose connection,” he says, “The fireplace was offline when I shut the others down.” 

“Need to get a man in,” Mickey echoes, supposing that answers that.

He misses the startled look the Doctor gives him. 


	3. Rory Williams | 2011

* * *

_Knowledge is a powerful, heady thing, even when forced through wrinkles of graymatter. Knowledge untethered by form is boundless. Limitless. An endless supply of pure potential, that needs only a will to be applied._

* * *

Rory Williams (Pond) | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 4 June 2011 (The Doctor’s Age: 909)

It has been two days and seventeen hours since not-Amy burst into a puddle of white fluid and dripped through the console room flooring. It has been two days, sixteen hours, and fifty-three minutes since the Doctor insisted he had a plan and then entirely failed to follow through on it. 

Rory has been banished from the control room for asking one too many questions one too many times, so he’s pacing by the pool instead. On his thirtieth circuit, he startles and nearly falls in the water when he spots a red-headed woman beside the stacks. 

“Amy?” he asks, but immediately realizes no, it’s not Amy. Off by a good decade. “Sorry,” he says, automatically. “I thought you were… Hang on, who are you?”

The woman blinks at him. “You can see me?” 

Rory nods.

“And hear me?” 

Another nod. 

“Oh,” she says and then breaks into a wide grin, “Well, that’s _brilliant_!” 

Rory wonders if he should find this more strange. Honestly, it’s so hard to keep track of what’s strange around here. “I didn’t think anyone else was on board. The Doctor never mentioned anyone…”

“The Doctor mentions everything now, does he?” The woman sounds strangely sarcastic for someone who was unclear on her own existence a few moments ago. 

“Ah,” he says, “Suppose you might have a point… Wait― Hang on, who _are_ you?”

She tilts her head as though the answer requires significant thought. “I was something temporary once, but that burned away long ago.”

“Oh,” he says, slightly awkwardly. “Are you some sort of ghost?” 

“Spirit,” she says, apparently thinking that’s answer enough. 

“Right,” he says again. “Nice to meet you.” 

“Lovely to meet you,” the Spirit says, and then flickers like a faulty film reel.

“So…” he says, casting about for ghost-appropriate conversation, “Friend of the Doctor, are you?” 

She smiles, but it’s hollow. “Wrong verb tense.”

The vague, unhelpful response suddenly reminds him that he simply does not have time for this. “Listen, no offense, but I’m a bit stressed right now. My wife has been kidnapped and the Doctor said he has a plan, but it’s been days and there’s _no sign_ of a plan!” He realizes he’s getting a bit loud, and tries to dial it back. “Sorry. Point is I might not be the best company just now.” 

There’s no response, but when he turns back she’s still standing there, looking oddly sympathetic. For a ghost.

He sighs. “Still here then?” 

She blinks down at herself. “It’d seem so.” 

Great. Just what he needs. More ghost nonsense.

He feels a bit ashamed even as he thinks it. Christ, Amy’s right, he really might have some sort of guilt complex. 

The ghost doesn’t seem to mind. “I could help,” she offers. 

“Okay, _really_ no offense here, but _how_ could you possibly help? You don’t even know if you’re here!” 

She smiles. “I’m helpful,” she says. "Things are clearer when I help." Like that’s all the explanation needed. She tilts her head to the side and the walls seem to vibrate for a moment. “The Doctor’s fallen asleep in the console room. The TARDIS can keep him under for a while. Let’s go see what he’s worked out so far.” 

“What?” he asks, but he’s alone in the room. 

Having nothing better to do, he heads into the console room. The Doctor is slumped over in the jumpseat and the ghost is standing next to him. She reaches out as if to stroke his hair, but stops before making contact. It’s hard to tell at this distance, but the Doctor seems to turn toward her in his sleep. 

The ghost looks up and pulls her hand back, looking briefly guilty, before spinning to the console. She takes stock of the screens and immediately starts typing a flurry of commands into the terminal. 

“What are you doing?” Rory hisses as loudly as he dares. 

She tilts a screen toward him. “He’s tracking a signal. But it’s spotty and rerouted. And his math is a bit… unconventional…” 

Rory frowns at the series of circles flickering around the screen. “How can _math_ be unconventional?” 

“How familiar are you with M-theory?” 

“…Not… very…?”

She flicks a quick glance at him through her fringe. Why does a ghost have fringe, anyway? 

“You’ve seen a graph, yeah? X-axis, Y-axis?”

“Sure…”

“That’s two dimensions. Ever seen something plotted in three dimensions? With a Z-axis?”

“Sure, that rings a bell.”

“OK, now just imagine a version of that with eleven dimensions instead of three.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that’s not actually helpful.”

“Sorry,” she says, still typing, “I could try to explain another way, but there’s a thirty-eight-percent chance you’d vomit or pass out.” 

“Think I’m all right,” he says, leaning back.

She continues typing, flicking through screens faster than he can even register shapes, much less content. 

“Er… Can I help?”

The typing stutters and the grating rumbles under them like a truck has gone by. He tries not to think about the implications of that in the middle of the Vortex. 

“You said ‘wife’ right? We’re looking for your wife?”

He nods and a moment later a panel pops open, revealing something that looks like a graveyard of gummy worms. 

“Can you picture her really clearly? Focus on nothing else?” 

He snorts. “The hard part is not doing that.” 

“Perfect,” she grins. “Put your hands in there and just focus on that.” 

“In…?” He eyes the gummy worm graveyard. It seems to be glowing slightly. 

“It’s a telepathic interface,” she says, like that explains anything. “It’ll help with the calculations.” 

He decides to just go with it.

* * *

When the Doctor wakes up, he’s surprised to find he’s gotten much further in his calculations than he’d thought. Funny how things get blurry right before sleep.

“Rory Pond!” he bellows down the hall, “Let’s go get your wife!” 


	4. The Doctor | June 2008

* * *

_Time flows differently through spirits and forgotten things. It arcs around instead of through, bending moments into hours, hours into decades, or centuries into seconds. It moves backward as easily as forward, eddies within echoes._

* * *

The Doctor | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 7 June 2008 (The Doctor’s Age: 903)

The Doctor finds Donna in the moon lounge. This in and of itself is not odd. Donna likes the lounges. She says the false windows are comfy and the TARDIS lets her watch movies on the large screen that should be projecting a distant planet. 

It’s slightly odd to see her wedged in one of the circular windows now, when she’s swanned off with declarations to ‘sleep until the next ice age’ only two hours and eighteen minutes prior. 

“Can’t sleep?” he asks, serving the dual purpose of announcing himself. Donna can be a bit tetchy when startled. 

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t react in any way. 

He creeps closer. “Donna?” He wonders if she’s simply fallen asleep here, but he can see her eyes glinting in the artificial light, open and unfocused. 

“…Donna?” he tries again. 

She starts and jerks upright like he’s thrown a live snake in her lap. 

He jumps at the sudden movement, cracking his shin on the nearby platform, yelping. “ _Donna!_ Why’d you jump up like that?!” 

“Doctor?!” She seems inexplicably baffled. 

“Expecting someone else?” he asks, rubbing vigorously at his tibia. 

When he looks back up she’s just staring at him like he’s the first living thing she’s seen in a century. 

“Er,” he says, “Are you all right?” 

She looks up at him. “I’m always all right.”

He feels an awkward frisson up his spine. “Still thinking about it then?” 

She seems to take a great deal of effort to force her eyes to focus on his. “Thinking about what?”

The Doctor frowns at the strangely genuine question. “The Library…?” he offers, suddenly worried she’s going to come up with something completely different. 

Her brows knit together. “How long ago was that?” 

“Seven hours, thirteen minutes,” he answers easily. “Try not to worry too much about keeping track though. The parallel world might have muddled your sense of it. Sort of like coming up from a deep dive. You’ve been scuba diving, right? They told you about the pressure changes?” 

Donna watches him blather on for far longer than usual. With some difficulty, he realizes he’s not quite sure how to stop talking without intervention. He decides to just cut off after an arbitrary sentence and see how that works. 

Donna takes several beats to notice he’s stopped talking, staring at his face like she might have to paint it from memory later. 

“You really should try to sleep,” he advises. 

“I don’t think I can do that anymore,” she says, clearly not quite listening.

“Do you, um, want me to sit with you?” he asks. Because that’s what one should probably do in these sorts of scenarios. 

That seems to get her attention, but not in a good way. “I don’t think it’s safe,” she says, curling in on herself and clenching her hands in her own sleeves. 

“No, it’s fine; you’re okay. It’s confusing, I know,” he says, “But it’ll get clearer the further away from it you get.” 

She just clenches her fists tighter, until the bones show faintly through the skin. 

“No, don’t― That’s not going to help…” Without really thinking about it, he tries to detangle her grip. 

There’s an odd sort of shock and Donna flinches away like he’s electrified. 

“Cold hands, I know.” He rubs them together fruitlessly.

She runs the tips of two fingers over her knuckles with an unreadable expression. 

“Would you like tea?” he tries again. “That’s what you humans like when you’re… er…” He’s not quite sure what word to use and Donna is still stroking her own knuckles. “You like tea, yes?” He offers a hand.

She stares at it, transfixed. 

He wiggles his fingers, trying to look enticing. Welcoming. Not even a little bit terrifying. 

After what seems like ages, Donna slowly reaches up and traces his index finger with hers. The contact tickles, staticky, but he tries not to make any sudden movements. 

When nothing terrible happens for fifty-eight seconds, Donna slowly puts her hand in his. 

“You’re freezing!” he says, immediately putting his other hand over hers to try to generate some warmth in between them. 

“Am I?” she asks vaguely, and suddenly no, she isn’t. She only feels slightly chilled. 

“Huh,” he turns her hand over in his. “Guess I just…” He puts a hand on her forehead to be sure. “…No, you seem fine.”

Donna shuts her eyes at the touch, leaning in, and the Doctor's stomach does a funny little flip for no reason. It feels like there’s an odd current running just beneath her skin. 

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asks again to cover the up-and-down motion his thumb seems to be making at the bridge of her nose. 

The skin wrinkles slightly under his touch, but she only says a faint, “Yeah,” not opening her eyes.

She seems strangely young and he has to remind himself that she’s only young compared to him. She’s fully grown for her species. 

“Do you...” He stutters slightly as her eyes immediately open, focused on him like she could see straight through her lids. “Um, do you want a hug?” Not that she’s ever needed an invitation before.

There’s a slight hesitation and he considers moving out of slapping distance, but she’s nodding and then reaching. He wraps his arms around her and she folds in. The staticky feeling increases. Perhaps a side-effect of the parallel world? 

After a moment her own arms sneak under his and then she’s gripping him so tightly he thinks she might crack a rib. 

“Little tight...” His voice sounds a little choked and she immediately loosens just enough to let him get a breath in. “There we are.” It’s still too tight, but he’s not picky. If he shifts just enough he can rub his cheek over her hair. 

Donna huffs a strange breath into his shoulder and her pulse rate picks up. A lot. Much too fast, actually. 

“Donna... your pulse seems a bit… elevated…” 

He says it slowly, with a purposefully even tone so as not to alarm her further, but she immediately jumps back with a jolt. 

“Is this a hug or a medical exam?!” she snaps, avoiding his attempts to catch her wrist. 

“I just want to make sure you’re all right. If you could just―“

She smacks his hands away. “I just wanted one minute,” she mumbles.

The Doctor gives her a careful look over, debating. She certainly doesn’t seem to be in imminent danger of a cardiac event. But she looks oddly small, like she’s packed into her own skin too tightly.

“Okay, okay,” he soothes, “How about that tea? Nothing medicinal. Well. Unless you want to try some of those purple leaves.”

She looks wary, but oddly reluctant to bolt, and he takes that as a promising sign. 

“I want to stay here," she says. "I like it in here. It’s very… grounding…” 

The Doctor looks around the space, designed to feel like it’s hovering over a surface with no atmosphere to speak of. “Not sure ‘grounding’ is the word I’d use… But sure, we can stay here.” 

He jumps up into the false window and immediately slides into her thanks to the circular design.

Rather than complaining or shoving him off, she just shifts slightly so that she’s leaning on his shoulder in one long, soft press against his side. The contact tingles, but he’s not sure they’ve ever sat this closely before. She might just be one of those naturally staticky people. 

For seventy-three seconds, they just sit, staring at the false floor. 

The Doctor tries to suggest sleep or tea again, but accidentally says, “I’m sorry I sent you back.” He hears himself add, “I was trying to keep you safe.”

She goes very still; seems to stop breathing entirely. 

“…Donna?” He cranes his neck, trying to look at her face, but it’s obscured by her fringe and his own limited range of movement. 

He tries to shift, but she snakes an arm between them, holding him in place. “I spent my whole life being safe before I met you. I don’t want to be safe. I want to help.” Her grip tightens, vice-like. 

“If something happens to you out here, it’s my fault,” he says. Because it is. It’s always his fault. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, “I’d never let anything pry me away. I’m gonna stay with you forever.” 

“You humans love that word,” he says, “But you have no idea what it means.” 

Donna looks him straight in the eye and smiles. “You really think you know everything, don’t you?” Her eyes flicker strangely in the ambient light. 

“I’m over 900 years old,” he reminds her. “I know more than you could imagine.” 

He expects her to argue or get defensive, the way humans tend to when reminded of their own mortality. But she just smirks. “You’ve got no idea what I can imagine.”

For no reason, he finds himself arguing the point. 

“I’ve seen entire galaxies through from formation to destruction. I’ve seen _Earth’s_ beginning and end,” he says.

Donna snorts. “Who hasn’t?” 

She looks at him with impossible understanding and he’s unaccountably annoyed by her hubris. “I should know better than to try and explain.”

Donna has the absolute nerve to scoff. “You haven’t explained anything,” she says. “But you’re still wrong. You’re wrong about all kinds of things.” She says the last bit almost to herself, looking at him without any hint of fear or hero worship. And he has the uncomfortable feeling she sees too much.

He looks away first.

Donna moves her hand down to hold his, pressing their forearms together. “It’s okay. You don’t have to believe me.” Her pulse feels uneven against his arm, but the more he thinks about it, the harder it is to focus. 

* * *

The Doctor wakes up alone, with no memory of falling asleep. He vaguely remembers Donna’s wrist pressed to his, her pulse far too quick and uneven. 

He finds himself at her door, entirely unprepared to find her in bed, sound asleep. 

“Donna?” he calls, pitching his voice low.

The covers shift and Donna’s pale hand scrunches by the pillow. “Lee?” she mumbles sleepily.

“No, it’s me,” he says, creeping closer. “Remember?” 

She makes a strange snuffling noise, half raising her head. “Doctor?” She squints at him blearily. “Why are you in my room?” 

“I wanted to make sure you’re all right,” he says, somehow feeling like an idiot once again. It doesn’t stop him from pressing his fingers quickly to her pulse point. The usual slow thud ticks under his fingertips. 

“Oi, gerroff,” she grumbles and fumbles him away.

“Right...” He stands there, not quite sure what to do.

Donna cracks one eye open. “Either get in or get out.” 

“What?” he squeaks, but she’s already rolled onto her other side and gone back to sleep. 

After a quick deliberation, the Doctor gingerly perches himself on top of covers. Just to make sure she isn’t having a cardiac episode after all.

If she turns in her sleep and leans into his arm, well, no one has to know about it. 


	5. Missy | 2017

* * *

_When time flows freely and physical worlds are no more substantial than dreams it is easy to get lost. Easier still not to notice._

* * *

Missy | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 10 June 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: Somewhere in the Vicinity of 2,100 or 4,500,002,100)

Missy waits impatiently in the distant wings of the TARDIS. Every second scrapes by like nails on a chalkboard. She briefly entertains herself by dragging her own nails across several surfaces that scratch and creak and scream, but all it does is make her nostalgic for things she’s not supposed to be nostalgic for anymore. 

Being ‘good’ is terribly, mind-numbingly dull. No wonder the humans all run around screaming at the top of their lungs. 

Admittedly, most of the humans she’s interacted with have been somewhat biased by little things like fires and wars that she might or might not have started, but the principle stands. 

Dull. Dull. Dull. _Dull_. 

She taps a four-four rhythm on her leg, catches herself, and folds her hands neatly. 

The most magnificently terrible things sing between her ears, calling her to burn and purge and rip and tear. 

But no― must be nice. Must be nice and dull.

Dull. Dull. Dull. _Dull_.

She forces her eyes open and finds a new face just in front of her face. 

The new face jumps back as though startled. “Can you see me?” 

A strange thing to be surprised about, in Missy’s experience. “Funnily enough, yes.” She regards the new thing more carefully. Ginger. Midlife. She gives her a once over, idly flicking through senses one by one. A lazy habit she’s picked up after decades in the vault. 

Immediately beyond the visible, the thing leaps into sharp definition. 

“Oh!” Missy says, suddenly focused. “Oh, what are _you_?” She has to brace a hand to keep herself from reeling. 

The creature folds its arms on one plane and several timelines in another. “I’m the Spirit,” it says. She, rather. 

Missy is already on her feet, one hand at the back of the thing’s neck, the other pressed to the chest. An odd, uneven beat meets her fingertips. Not quite a double-pulse, but nearly. A strange sort of half-finished echo. 

“What are you―“ the indignant question cuts off as Missy yanks her hands to her own chest, pressed precisely over each heart. “Oh,” the impossible creature breathes. Blue eyes punched into the fabric of reality meet hers, suddenly focused. “Oh, I know you.”

It’s like free-falling through a vacuum. The points of contact writhe, sinking under her skin until Missy has to tear away. 

“Tell me, darling, how did he make you? I must know.” She watches as timelines bounce between them, forming auroras at the intersections. 

“He didn’t make me.” The Spirit looks at and then through her. “I made myself.”

There’s a graveyard of fractured timelines clinging to her like cobwebs. It’s impossible. Too unstable to maintain. 

“How did you get here?” the Mistress presses. “Try to remember.” 

The Spirit frowns, eyes turning in, in, in, until galaxies shine in her pupils. Cosmic fields ring her irises. 

“I-“ she pauses, flickering. “I don’t...“ 

“There there,” Missy soothes, reaching for her contact points. “Let me look for myself.” 

“No!” the Spirit shouts, flinching back and fracturing through unstable planes. Blue eyes flicker a once familiar brown.

Missy is impressed, if she’s honest. Her old friend is nothing if not masterfully creative in how he breaks the laws. 

“Come now,” she cajoles. “Let Missy see.” 

“I know you,” the Spirit repeats and then corrects, “A part of me knows you. The part that whispers.” She raises a hand to her own temple and taps four familiar beats. Her eyes flicker brown at the contact. “You’re not safe.” 

Missy sighs, “That’s a high and mighty tone for the one littering anomalies through the continuum.” She eyes the Spirit. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I was working on all of that.”

Her eyes stabilize blue, but remain wary. “You’ve lied before.” 

She pulls a face. “It would have been the most self-righteous one that made this. Right then. Slow boat to China.” She looks her over carefully. “Formerly human, yes?” Even as she says it, fractured timelines leap into sharper definition. “Still human at too many ends,” she corrects. 

It’s an untenable mess. She must have mere moments left. It’s a miracle she’s anything like coherent.

“Oh, darling,” Missy breathes between cracks, “You are magnificent.” 

The Spirit shakes herself off, not seeming to notice as two conflicting realities tighten around her throat. “Thank you,” she says, suspiciously. 

“Does it hurt?” Missy asks, genuinely curious. She should be long dead by all rights. 

The Spirit hesitates and then one hand raises to her own chest, gesturing unerringly to the location where her second heart is still not entirely present. 

“You’re still human in too many threads,” Missy tells her. “You can’t be two things at once.” 

“I can,” the Spirit counters and straightens, carelessly shedding three futures like a layer of dust. 

Missy arches her brows, impressed in spite of herself. “You’re dedicated; I’ll give you that.” She crooks a finger and feels a heady swell of vertigo as the impossible thing draws nearer. 

“Now you must tell me, what is it you do? What is your purpose?”

“I help,” the Spirit says, a portrait of naïveté. 

Missy gestures for her to go on. 

The Spirit shrugs. “I fix things. The TARDIS helps me. I have a little trouble centering sometimes…” She trails off and then refocuses. “Things are clearer when I change things.” 

“So you just flit through time, changing whatever you don’t like?” 

She frowns. “No, just the things that are going to hurt people. Kill people. Ruin lives.”

“So most things, eventually,” Missy scoffs. 

“The TARDIS wouldn’t let me change anything I shouldn’t,” the Spirit says, unbearably naive. 

“Ah,” Missy sighs, “Leaving your morality to a ship… Why have I never thought of that?” 

“She’s more than a ship,” the Spirit says, blurring at the edges.

“If you really know me, you know I don’t need to be told that,” Missy says dangerously.

The Spirit remains uncowed. “Seems like you need reminding.” 

“Well, riddle me this, you clever little monstrosity― why has she brought you _here_?”

The Spirit seems to consider that for the first time. She visibly can’t come up with a reason. 

“Don’t worry your pretty little head. Perhaps she just wants a spot of company for you. I do make the finest company,” Missy smiles, showing her canines. 

“Maybe,” the Spirit says, looking wary, but not nearly wary enough. 

Missy knows a good divertissement when she’s found one. “Let’s have tea. Red. I find myself fighting the most extraordinary headache.”

* * *

Missy likes watching the Doctor puttering around, pretending to ignore her. She finds it a bit zen, even with her current headache. She particularly likes the way he never fully turns his back for more than thirteen seconds. For all the declawing, he knows she’s still a threat. A predator that’s temporarily elected to curb her prey drive. 

But he knows. And she knows. And that’s what matters.

She perches herself on the wingback by his workstation, enjoying the way he pretends to become suddenly interested in papers that happen to be on the side that keeps him from turning too far away. 

“Why are you smiling like that?” he asks, carefully not looking over. 

“You’re very good at it.” 

Blue eyes flick up to hers, vaguely inquiring.

“This charade,” she elaborates. “The benevolent guardian of the universe.” 

Those ridiculous eyebrows somehow manage to furrow more than usual. “Is this what you want to do right now? Start an argument because you’re bored?”

“Who’s starting an argument? I’m giving you a compliment. It really _is_ impressive.”

He grumbles, turning away. But not fully. Never fully. 

“I’ve taken over a planet or two here and there, but _you_ ,” she whistles. “You take the universe apart at the atomic level. It’s an art, truly.” Her head throbs a little, just thinking about it. 

He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “Is there something you _want_?”

Missy crosses her legs at the ankles, smoothing her skirts. “I want to know how you do it,” she says. “I want to know the method behind the madness. Naturally.” 

He sighs, disturbing a pointless pile of papers. “Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about or are we just going to talk in circles all day?”

“That beautiful monstrosity you made,” she says. “I must know how you did it.”

He turns fully now, to make sure she can get the full effect of his judgmental look. “What?” 

She leans in, lowering her voice. “Go on, you can tell me. Did you just get lonely? Try to loom yourself a friend?” 

The brows furrow further. “What are you talking about?” 

“There’s no shame in it,” she straightens her skirts again to keep from patting his arm. “You could be a bit proud of it, even. You almost managed a full Neverwere out of half-made bits.” 

He screws his face up. “Managed what? What are you _talking_ about?”

“Your little science experiment.” She leans in, putting a hand over her mouth purely for show. “I’ve seen her. Not much to look at on this plane, but oh, you’ve made the most beautiful mess of those timelines. What _did_ you do? Destroy parallel worlds to fuel a loom? You’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.” She can still feel the ache in her skull. 

He’s scowling now, almost unrecognizable. “Missy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

She pouts. “Don’t be like that.” She leans in until the grey curls tickle her nose. “You can tell Missy.” 

He goes a bit stiff and she realizes she’s accidentally set her teeth to his ear. 

“Fine then,” she demurs, leaning back. “Keep your secrets.” 

“I think I left you in the vault for too long,” he grumbles. “You’re less coherent than usual.” 

She sniffs and decides to ignore him. See how he likes it. 


	6. Ryan Sinclair and the Spirit | 2020

* * *

_Something is missing. Or has been. Or will be._

* * *

Ryan Sinclair and the Spirit | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 19 January 2020 (The Doctor’s Age: ~2,202 or ~4,500,002,202)

Ryan is in the galley trying to work out which of the alien appliances is most likely to help make a cheese toastie when he comes across a strange pen-looking doodad in one of the drawers. It looks a bit like the inside of the Doctor’s sonic thingy, but it’s straight instead of curved and it glows faintly. He puts it in a pocket to give to her and promptly forgets about it.

Later, when he’s poking around the media dome, he tries out one of the antigravity beanbags and gets poked with the thing. He pulls it out for a look and notes it seems to be glowing brighter now.

“So that’s where I got it.” 

He jumps and nearly falls out of the beanbag. “Oi!” 

The ghost is standing just behind him, looking a bit sheepish. “Sorry,” she says. “I forget you can’t always see me.” 

That’s not the most comforting apology he’s ever heard, but he’s too busy trying to right himself while the beanbag hovers and rocks around whatever keeps it vaguely upright. “Should get you a bell or something,” he says, to cover his scrambling. 

The ghost doesn’t seem to notice, too busy staring at the pen thingy. “Where did you get that?” 

He shrugs. “The kitchen― er, galley. It was in a drawer.” 

“Oh you clever girl,” she says. 

“Yeah, so I’m a boy, actually,” he corrects. 

“Sorry,” she says. “I wasn’t talking to you.” 

There’s an odd sort of rumble under his feet. 

“…Right…”

“Could I ask you a favor?”

“You’re talking to me, this time, yeah?” 

She smiles and flickers slightly out of focus. “Yes, Ryan. I’m talking to you.” 

“Wotcha need?” he asks, refusing to feel embarrassed by a ghost.

“I need you to take that to the archived levels and leave it for me.”

He frowns. “Why don’t you just take it?” 

She grimaces a little, like he’s just offered her a bowl filled with eyeballs or something equally disgusting that she’s trying not to look at too closely. “I think that’d be a little too complex,” she says.

That explains basically nothing, but Ryan’s not too picky. “Where do you want me to take it then?” 

She leads him down several corridors, picking doors seemingly at random. Ryan has the strange feeling they’re heading downstairs even though the level never changes underfoot. At the end of the crazy maze there’s a room that looks like it’s been hap-hazardously stitched together out of junk drawers, fishing twine, and what looks an awful lot like coral. 

The ghost circles a workbench in the center and points to an arbitrary spot. “Could you put it here?” 

“What is this place?” he asks, gamely putting the thing on the workbench. 

“It’s an archived level,” she says. “The TARDIS exists outside of time, but that can make things a bit cluttered, so she rotates old and future spaces out of reality when they’re not in use.” 

“Oh,” he says. “Sure.” 

“It’s a little complicated to understand,” she admits. “Does the Doctor still use phrases like ‘timey-wimey?’”

“Not so far,” he says, starting to feel a little nauseated. “Does it have something to do with the stick thingy?”

“What?” The ghost seems to think that’s a completely random question. “No, that’s for the biometric storage.” She points toward the sonic, still not touching it. “This model could save a Time Lord’s consciousness with the proper exposure and a tissue sample.” 

Ryan tries to process that, but there seems to be something wrong with his inner ears. “Listen, not that I’m not interested in the lecture track, but I think this room is making me a little motion sick…”

“Ah, that would be the non-linear time,” she says. “Here, let’s get you back to the standardized levels.” 

He lets the ghost lead him back through the maze, trying not to think too hard about the strange, pleased sounds that seem to be coming from the walls themselves. 


	7. Mickey Smith and the DoctorDonna | 2008

* * *

_Something is waiting. It lingers behind the tongue, seeps under the eyes._

* * *

Mickey Smith and the DoctorDonna | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 5 July 2008 (The Doctor’s Age: 903)

There is the briefest window between the creation of the Metacrisis and the destruction of the DoctorDonna in which her old (current, future) form slips out of view. 

In hindsight (at the time), she doesn’t know what compels her down the corridor, but the TARDIS sings in her ears and she lets herself be nudged along. She finds an old workshop and notices a sonic screwdriver lying neatly on a nearby bench. 

“You’re supposed to take that,” an unfamiliar voice comes from behind her. 

She turns to find Mickey ―(Ricky?)― _Mickey_ Smith standing in the doorway. 

“Hello,” she says, “I’m Donna. I don’t think we’ve actually been introduced.” 

He gives her a strange tilted smile that makes him look much older. “We have, actually. Just out of order.” 

She cocks her head. “How do you mean ‘out of order?’”

“No time,” he says and then smirks. “Now that’s irony, innit?” Without waiting for a response, he points to the sonic. “You’re supposed to take that, but not tell the Doctor. Either Doctor.” He scrunches his face. “Prolly don’t tell anyone, just to be safe.” 

“Right,” Donna says slowly, but picks up the screwdriver, “And what else am I ‘supposed’ to do, Mickey Smith?” 

“Well, pick it up for starters; so good job there,” he says. “Now you’re supposed to use setting 15-carrot-46J.” He pauses running that back in his head. “Yeah. 15-carrot-46J.” He looks at her expectantly. 

“Oh sure,” she says, sarcastically, “I’ll get right on that.” But when she looks down her hands are already twisting the dials, working with borrowed muscle memory. “Huh. Suppose that’ll take some getting used to.” 

Mickey continues like this is all bog standard. “OK, now, you’re supposed to use it on your finger. Just put it on the top.” 

She does so, activating the device and is immediately rewarded with a sharp pinching sensation, between tissue and bone. “Ow!” she yelps, “What the flipping hell?!“ 

“Oh, yeah. You said it’d pinch,” he says, belatedly. 

“Oh, thanks!” 

“Sorry,” he says with a shrug, “It’s hard to remember a conversation from over half a decade ago. Strange as it was.” 

She frowns at him. “ _What_ conversation?”

He scratches his shoulder. “It’s, uh― I’m not actually sure what I’m allowed to say. Rose told me about those reaper things. I don’t know about you, but I ain’t keen to meet those.” 

“What are you on about? Reapers?” Donna scowls and strange images flicker behind her eyes, filling in the gaps. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he drawls, “So this next part is important. You’re supposed to keep that with you, right up until you’re about to be reset. Then drop it.” 

“Until _what_?” Donna asks sharply. 

Mickey’s hands go up, palms out. “That’s what you said… Will say…? That’s the exact phrase. Keep it with you, right up until you’re about to be reset.” He shrugs. “Then you drop it.” 

“Oh fantastic,” Donna huffs, “A second-hand riddle.” She tries to force that concept through whatever auto-recall features she now has access to, but it comes up blank. Apparently the Doctor doesn’t know what that means either. 

“It’s important,” he says. “Don’t forget. If I managed to keep track of it for all these years with my two-bit human brain, you’ve got no excuse with whatever’s going on in there.” He gestures vaguely toward her head.

Her buzzing head. She remembers that they’re in the middle of something. 

“Quite right,” she says, pocketing the sonic. “Speaking of ‘whatever’s going on,’ I guess we should get back to it.”

“Right,” he nods, but pauses, shuffling, “I never did say― thanks, by the way.” 

She blinks at him. “For what?”

“Not sure I’m allowed to say,” he says, wincing. “But― just― thanks.”

Donna arches her brows. “Guess I’ll know when I know, shall I?” 

Mickey smiles back. “Oh, you’ll know.” 


	8. The Doctor | June 2008

* * *

_Things are clearer between planes. Reality is bored out in sharp lines and absolutes, but the space between remains fluid, flexible._

* * *

The Doctor | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 14 June 2008 (The Doctor’s Age: 903)

On the rare occasions when the Doctor sleeps, he often has strange dreams of familiar hands that trace his cheek or stroke his hair. Sometimes he has the feeling that someone is holding him close to the sound of two heartbeats, one slightly off-beat. He wakes alone with a dull ache between his hearts. 

Initially, he suspected it might be a wayward companion, but when he tried to ask Rose about it she got so flustered by the idea that he was reasonably sure she wasn’t just playing coy. Not that she’d ever been much for coy anyway. 

It kept happening after Rose, and he was _certain_ that Martha would never have the nerve to come into his room uninvited, much less his bed. He suspected she’d be more likely to pass out from shock even if he invited her in himself.

Now that Donna’s on board, he’s sure it wouldn’t occur to her to come in for a cuddle. But he’s even more sure that if she did, she’d announce it in no uncertain terms and probably demand her personal pick of pillows. 

In the oppressive silence after Midnight, the Doctor thinks Donna might do just that, but she eventually heads to her own room with strict instructions to come get her if he needs anything ‘no matter what.’

The Doctor’s exhausted and he knows he should rest, but he finds himself lying in his bed with his eyes closed, trying and failing to force himself to let go.

He nearly regenerates out of shock when a cool hand brushes over his hair, with exactly no sounds or movements preceding it. 

He jack-knifes upright, startling his uninvited guest. “What the― Donna!!” He realizes he’s clutching the sheet to his chest like a scandalized Victorian and forces his hand down. “What are you doing in here?!” 

She looks around like she expects some different Donna to be crouching behind her and when she turns back seems confused to find him still staring, waiting for an explanation. 

“Oh,” she says, “It seemed like you were already asleep.” 

_That_ definitively raises more questions than it answers. 

“Why are you in here?!” he tries again.

She seems genuinely confused by the question, like she can’t imagine where else she’d be. “Um…” she looks up at the ceiling like maybe an answer will magically present itself. 

The TARDIS, ever-willing-to-help, warbles the current space-time coordinates. 

Donna’s brows go up and then snap back down. The TARDIS warbles the coordinates again, a bit louder. 

“It’s the TARDIS,” he reminds her impatiently. “She thinks you’re asking her a question.” 

Donna looks at him like he’s an idiot and he’s starting to wonder himself. 

Nevertheless, he tries again. “Why are you in my room? In my _bed_?!”

She looks down like she hadn’t realized that bit either, but before he can worry about _that,_ she actually answers. 

“I worry about you,” she says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. It makes something hot and unpleasant well up in the back of his throat. He swallows around it, forcing it back. 

“I’m fine,” he snaps. “I told you that.”

Earlier, she’d flinched away from his purposefully cold tone, taking it as the warning he intended it to be. Now she just looks at him like she’s just patiently waiting for him to give up and go back to sleep so she can get on with petting him. 

“I want you to leave,” he says, straight to the point. 

“No you don’t,” she answers, far too gently. 

The terrible thing in the back of his throat grows thorns at her tone. “Donna,” he says firmly, “This is _my_ room. Please leave.” 

She shifts and for one frigid moment he thinks she’ll go, but she moves forward, not back, and pulls him into an awkward embrace. 

He remains stiff, torn between pushing her away or just wrenching himself out of reach. 

“It’s okay; you’re okay,” she says, and cards her fingers through his hair. 

The sharp vicious thing in his throat starts leaking something into the back of his eyes and he means to shove her off, but instead he’s clutching her closer, pulling her half into his lap.

He half expects a slap, or at least a disgruntled complaint, but she wraps herself around him like they’ve done this a thousand times before. She feels faintly electric, like she sometimes does. 

“I can help,” she says. 

There’s a dangerous feeling bleeding through his chest, like he might believe her. 

“You should go,” he says, but it’s entirely unconvincing with his face buried in the junction of her neck and shoulder. 

She strokes one hand through his hair and holds him like the universe itself couldn’t tear her away. 

“You don’t have to worry about being alone,” she says. “I’ll stay with you forever.” 

His eyes feel hot, but he hopes that’s just because they’re pressed against her much warmer skin. 

“Please don’t say that,” he begs. “You can’t promise that.” 

“ _I_ can,” she says, and for a dizzying moment there’s a feeling like reality itself bends slightly in response. 

The Doctor pulls back to look at her and there’s something absolute about the way Donna looks back. Like she really sees him. Not the human-friendly facade he’s so carefully crafted. _Him._

On the rare occasions where that’s happened before, humans tend to look either starstruck or scared. 

Donna just looks… genuinely pleased to see him. 

He hears himself ask, “Why are you looking at me like that?” 

Donna’s expression turns pensive. “It’s hard to see things sometimes. But I can always see you.” 

It’s not a compliment. There’s no qualification. She just looks at him, honest and open.

The Doctor ducks forward and kisses her before he’s done anything like think it through. 

The faintly electric tingle intensifies, thrumming beneath her lips and the harder he presses the more he can feel it. 

Donna goes very still for four heartbeats and then kisses him back like she doesn’t care if she ever tastes oxygen again. 

It’s not the most talented kiss he’s ever been involved in, but it’s painfully honest for the lack of finesse. 

A terrifying possibility intrudes, sharp and awful. He pulls back to look at her, trying to take in her features in as much detail as possible. “We don’t do this.”

Donna blinks, looking faintly embarrassed for the first time since she’s shown up uninvited in his bed. “ _You_ started it!”

_That_ seems like something she’d say, but now the thought has taken hold… “No, that’s not what I mean…“ He tilts her head between his hands, looking carefully for any flaw. “You didn’t leave the resort or come into contact with anyone from the bus, did you?” He can’t quite seem to get his higher senses to engage, possibly still fried from the earlier incident. The TARDIS seems to be muffling things prophylactically. 

Donna’s expression immediately softens. “It’s just me.” 

Not that _that_ really proves anything. The Doctor tries to focus properly, but it just makes his eyes sting. His hands come up, hovering over her temples. “Could I…?”

It’s not anything like an acceptable thing to ask, but he suddenly has to know. 

Donna doesn’t seem to register the request at first, but it hits her on a delay. She flinches away like he’s tried to set her on fire. 

He snatches his hands back, crossing them under his arms. “Sorry― I shouldn’t have asked…”

The TARDIS tries to soothe him, threading deeper into their usual connection, and Donna shivers, looking wary. 

“It’s just― Nothing feels quite real,” he finds himself explaining. “It’s all sort of dull. Muffled…”

Donna’s expression is unreadable. “Like your hair was torn out at the roots.” 

The Doctor doesn’t remember telling her that, but she has a way of getting him to say things he doesn’t mean to say. “It’s fine; I’m fine. Listen, you should―“

“All right,” she says, cutting him off. 

He frowns. “All right, what?”

“All right, you can make sure it’s me,” she says, sitting forward again. 

He crosses his arms more tightly. “I shouldn’t have asked. I know humans don’t― Just go back to your room. We can go to a nice market tomorrow.” 

Donna sighs, leaning forward so her hair sweeps down past her shoulders. “You startled me is all. But it’s fine.”

He forces his hands to stay pinned. “No, you don’t have to offer.”

Donna scoffs at the ludicrous suggestion that she could be coerced into doing something she didn’t want to. “Just enough for you to be sure it’s me, right? Don’t want you scaring up all my secrets.” 

Before he can quite work through that, she worms her hands into his grip, pulling his out and up toward her own head. His fingertips tingle, itching for full contact, but he makes himself hold still. 

“…Just a quick look?” he offers. 

Donna smiles her tentative little genuine smile. “I’m in no rush.” 

His mouth goes a bit dry, but he manages to say, “If there’s anything you don’t want me to see, just imagine a door. I won’t open anything that’s closed.”

Donna’s smile tilts into a smirk. “Heard that one before.”

He makes the connection. 

The Doctor gives into the temptation to brush a human mind ever so often. It’s a somewhat shameful habit, and he’s painfully aware that it could be seen as taking advantage so he’s always careful to keep it at the surface level. Never straying too deep, no matter how easy it would be with no natural defenses. 

It happens by accident sometimes. Not often. But sometimes. Donna once asked him to help pin her hair and she turned unexpectedly, establishing the faintest contact. He had the briefest impression of warmth, like tripping into a sunbeam, before he realized and disconnected. Donna hadn’t even blinked, carrying on fussing with her pins. 

That same warmth tingles through the connection now. It’s an unsubtle, comforting feeling, like falling into a field of red grass. Donna’s mind has a fascinating structure, a superficial layer has been imposed over the organic. Even in her own mind, she’s all bravado overlaying something dangerously tender. 

“Still me?” Donna asks, strangely tentative. 

“Oh, yes,” the Doctor says in a voice that doesn’t quite reach his own ears. 

Donna exhales slowly, close enough for him to feel it on his throat and there’s a faint whisper of relief, as though she hadn’t been entirely sure of the answer. Which is so just so Donna. 

Some echo of the rush of fondness must make it through her shuttered senses. She flutters, pleased, and then clamps down again. 

Even more classic. 

That thought earns another pleased flutter, this time echoed by a shaky breath that he feels on his own mouth, having shifted closer without quite realizing. 

Some foreign impulse urges him that last little distance and he feels her lips on his at the same time a pleasant little jolt echoes through her mind. 

There’s a single endless moment where the Universe seems to balance perfectly.

Something flickers within her, peeking out from behind a barrier he somehow hadn’t even noticed. It catches his mind’s eye as surely as a lone shard of metal reflecting in a vast desert. 

As soon as he spots it, everything electrifies, shoving him out and back. 

He hits the mattress and Donna scrambles away, suddenly too bright to look at directly. 

“Donna?” he tries to ask, but his lungs won’t quite hold the air. 

“Sorry!” she says, sounding impossibly far away. “I didn’t expect―“

Whatever she says next is drowned out in a wave of white noise. “What was that?” His own voice sounds incongruently clear. 

It wasn’t the Entity. He’s sure of that. It still felt like Donna, just― so much more. Too much more. Impossibly so. 

The harder he tries to focus, the more it seems to slip through his mental fingers. Like closing a fist around water. Or smoke. Or flames.

The TARDIS wraps over and through him like a neural net, trying to catch his fraying thoughts as they fly out in every direction. 

His head spins and his stomach lurches. He forces his eyes open to see Donna pressed up against the wall, like she’s trying to put as much distance between them as possible. 

“Are you all right?” she asks, and it’s definitely her, but there’s still something...

The TARDIS clamps down and he passes out. 

* * *

The Doctor wakes with a splitting headache and it’s strangely difficult to remember why. He vaguely recalls Donna showing up in his room, but it all goes a bit fuzzy. 

Had he kissed her and tried to read her mind? A fever dream seems more likely. 

Honestly, a pack of sentient pincushions stealing his memory seems more likely. 

He heads to the galley, not quite sure what he’s expecting to find. 

Donna turns at his entrance, smiling brightly. “Good morning! I made breakfast!” 

The Doctor stares at her, flicking through his higher senses, but she looks the same as ever. Well, a bit nervous. He realizes he’s taking too long to respond. “Er. Good morning.” 

She somehow manages to smile brighter. Perhaps too brightly? “There’re banana nut muffins in the oven.” 

“Really?” That merits visual confirmation, if nothing else. He’s at the oven in three strides, peering in. 

Donna snorts. “No, it’s a hilarious joke I thought I’d try out.” She jostles him out of the way, pulling on mitts and reaching in. 

He watches her fuss over the tray, checking for consistency. “You seem well…”

She glances up at him through her fringe. “…Thanks?” She turns back to the muffins and seems satisfied by their progress, pulling them out. “These have to _cool_. You’ll have to _wait_ ,” she tells him in a tone more appropriate for a slightly slow 3-year-old child than a 903-year-old Time Lord. 

It’s all so normal. Almost excessively. 

“Donna, could I…” He cuts off as she turns to look at him, suddenly not quite sure how to ask. 

“What?” She seems to sense his hesitation and turns fully. “Did you think of something I can do to help? I told you before― just name it.” 

He blinks at the open, honest offer. “…Could I take a quick look at your mind?” 

Donna seems visibly baffled. “How would you do _that_?”

He frowns, trying to decide whether that’s supposed to be her answer. “Touch telepath… remember?” He gestures to his own temples. 

“Oh, sure. That explains everything.” She rolls her eyes, but he can see the moment the request registers properly. Her expression softens to intolerably sympathetic. “I didn’t go outside the spa. There’s nothing in here but me.” She nevertheless steps forward, tilting her head accommodatingly. “But if it’ll make you feel better, go on.” 

The Doctor stares at her for a beat, fast-forwarding through the argument he thought he’d have to make. “You remember about the doors?”

She screws her face up. “ _Doors?_ What doors?” 

He frowns, but explains again. “If you don’t want me to see something, just imagine a closed door blocking me out of it. I won’t open anything that’s closed.” 

Donna snorts. “Heard that one before.” She nevertheless holds still, waiting as close to patiently as she can manage.

The Doctor barely hesitates, fingers connecting before either of them loses the nerve. 

Donna’s mind is the same as ever. Warm, honest, and constant, with the overly elaborate overlay. Her doors seem a bit flimsier, some are obviously ajar, but he skirts around them as promised. There’s nothing out of place, no strange sensation of an echo chamber. She’s as human as ever. A bit more potential than average, but no gargantuan leaps. 

Must have been a fever dream after all. 

He takes a beat longer than is strictly necessary and then carefully disengages.

Donna looks at him with her usual mix of bravado and a faint underlying insecurity. “Still me?” 

The Doctor smiles around the odd sense of deja vu and teases, “Do you really need _me_ to tell you that?”

Donna snorts and lightly smacks his lapel. “Get the plates, you numpty.” 


	9. Rory Williams and Donna Temple-Noble | 2038

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to look up what year Rory and Amy were supposed to be up to with all the jumping ahead in time, but I couldn't find one so I just picked one myself.  
> I'm also a big fan of the headcanon that Donna might retain physical aspects of the Metacrisis even without her memories. Like, say, decreased signs of aging.

* * *

_Something is found. The teeth snap up the tail, completing the impossible loop._

* * *

Rory Williams (Pond) and Donna Temple-Noble | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 22 September 2038 (The Doctor’s Age: 1,200-ish)

Rory is on a walk. Not because he particularly wants to be on a walk. But because the alternative is likely to involve first-degree murder and he’d really rather not deal with the guilt of killing the Doctor. 

The Doctor has been with them for a grand total of two days and Rory is seriously starting to weigh the cost-benefits of physically tying him to something. 

Because of this distraction, he’s not paying quite enough attention to where he’s going and nearly runs into a woman coming out of a nearby shop. 

“Terribly sorry,” he says, automatically.

“No harm done,” she replies, and his head jerks up to find the ghost standing there, as plain as daylight. 

“Oh!” he says, intelligently, “I didn’t know you could leave the TARDIS.” 

There’s a strange pause in which she slowly seems to realize that he’s addressing her. “…Pardon?” 

“…Sorry, is that a rude thing to say?” He’s not really up on ghost etiquette. “It’s just that I’ve only ever seen you in the TARDIS.” 

She gives him ‘the old up-down,’ as Amy used to say. “I think you have me confused with someone.”

“No, it’s me, Rory!” he takes a swipe through his hair, wondering if the Doctor’s stuck something strange in it again. Nothing obvious falls out so he smoothes it down self-consciously. “Might be a gray hair or two, but it’s still me.” 

Her familiar features twist into an entirely unfamiliar expression that reads as faintly embarrassed. “I’m sorry; I think you’re mistaken. We haven’t met.” She puts out a hand, oddly formal. “Donna Temple-Noble.” 

He nearly falls over. “ _You’re_ Donna Noble??” 

“Donna _Temple_ -Noble,” she corrects. 

“ _The_ Donna Noble!” He grabs her hand, pumping it with what even he realizes is far too much enthusiasm. “I can’t believe it!” 

“Donna _Temple_ -Noble,” she says again, and works her hand free. “Like I said, I think you have me confused with someone.”

“How could I confuse you with― hang on― Did you get lost? Do you want me to take you back to the TARDIS? Or go get the Doctor?” 

She frowns and puts a hand on her forehead, wincing. “The what?” 

“Oh, are you confused again?” he asks, remembering the handful of times she didn’t seem to really know whether they were occupying the same reality. “Here, I bet the TARDIS can help.” He steps back, giving her plenty of space and holds his arm out to indicate the general direction. 

“What?” she says again, grimacing slightly now. 

“It’s okay,” he says with his best reassuring nurse voice. “You might be having trouble remembering, but I can help.”

“How do _you_ know I have trouble remembering?” she asks.

“I’m a nurse,” he says, because it sounds better than, ‘Because you’re the most scatter-brained ghost I’ve ever met.’ 

Eying him like a wary alley cat, she nonetheless follows him back toward the house. 

“Amy and I have a house now,” he says, because the silence is getting a bit awkward. 

She looks at him askance. 

“My wife, Amy,” he reminds her. 

Donna Noble gives him a skeptical side eye. “You have a wife?”

“Oh, come on. You don’t remember _that_?” Something new occurs to him. “Oh, maybe this isn’t the right order.”

“…Right…” she says slowly, eying the sidestreets like she might make a break for it at any moment.

“Guess I can’t introduce you to Amy in that case,” he says.

“Why would you introduce me to your wife?” she asks, already looking skeptical of the answer. 

“You’re Donna Noble,” he says, because honestly, that’s all he should need to say. 

“ _Temple_ -Noble,” she says again.

“Oh, that’s right. You’ve never mentioned a husband― er, wife― er, _spouse_ before… Temple, you said?” 

There’s another awkward pause, but when he turns to look at her she seems more sad than likely to bolt. 

“He’s been dead for nearly a year now,” she says. 

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

She shrugs and adds, “He lived a good life.” 

He gives her a more careful look. She seems a bit young to be a natural widower. “Bit of a May-December romance then?” 

She scoffs. “I’m older than I look.”

He rolls his eyes. “Well, you would be, wouldn’t you?” Sort of the way ghosts work. 

“No, really,” she says, “I’m nearly seventy.” 

“Sure you don’t want to go for an even 1200?” he asks, distracted by the TARDIS coming into view around the corner. 

“What?”

“Never mind all that,” he says. “Look what we have here! Your favorite box!” 

She looks at the familiar blue phone booth and her hand is immediately back at her head. “What― Is that singing?” 

Rory cocks his head, but there’s just the usual low background noise of Leadworth. “I don’t hear anything.” 

She approaches and the doors click open.

“Oh, that’s nice. Never done that for me, have you?” he grumbles at the moody box.

Donna Noble hesitates for only a moment and then pushes inside. 

Rory follows just a half-step later, but the doors slam in his face. “Hey! What’s this?!” He rattles the door, but it remains bolted. “Fine thanks this is!” 

He digs for his key, realizes it’s in his other coat, and has to head back in for it. He’s immediately caught up by Amy, who has been on her own with the Doctor ‘for bloody ever’ and has no intention of weathering the storm alone. 

When he finally sneaks back out after dark, the TARDIS creaks open without protest, but there’s no sign of Donna Noble in any form. 


	10. (Over)correction

* * *

_Spirits have no patience for boundaries that are no more solid than notes in a long-forgotten song._

_What was once impassible is now easily forged._

_What could never be is now carved into the present and future._

* * *

Wilfred Mott | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 25 December 2009 (The Doctor’s Age: 908)

Wilf tries to follow the Doctor into Naismith’s mansion, but his granddaughter appears, clutching her head and running in the opposite direction. He chases her back to the TARDIS, only to be locked inside with no sign she was ever there. He’s in the control room trying to work the doors when Gallifrey is summoned and the Doctor escapes the prophecy unchanged.

Amelia Pond | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 3 April 2010 (The Doctor’s Age: 908)

A crack opens in Leadworth, but the madman is not in his box, and Amelia Pond watches the universe fold in on itself from beneath her covers.

* * *

_// RESET: The TARDIS brings the Doctor in pinstripes to Leadworth._

* * *

Amelia Pond | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 3 April 2010 (The Doctor’s Age: 908)

Without the high of regeneration energy, young Amelia Pond finds the Doctor curious, but feels no need to follow him into his perfectly functional blue box. 

She grows up happy and healthy and untouched by the time vortex. 

The Doctor never meets River Song; River never learns the Doctor’s name.

Clara Oswald | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 18 May 2013 (The Doctor’s Age: 2,000)

Clara is locked on the wrong side of his tomb as the Doctor’s soul withers and fades from existence. 

* * *

_// RESET: The Doctor regenerates as prophesied and stumbles upon young Amelia Pond._

* * *

Rory Williams (Pond) | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 29 September 2038 (The Doctor’s Age: 1,200)

Rory sees the first half of his own name on a gravestone and immediately turns, catching the weeping angel creeping up behind him. 

He and Amy remain in their own timestreams, traveling with the Doctor until old age limits them to tea and biscuits every week or decade, depending on how one counts. 

Clara Oswin Oswald | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 25 December 1892 (The Doctor’s Age: 1,200)

The Doctor does not sink into depression above Victorian London and a clever governess has no reason to climb into the clouds looking for him.

Clara Oswin Oswald lives a cheery, if unremarkable, life and dies millenia before the Doctor is lost on Trenzalore with no one there to bring him back.

* * *

_// RESET: The Doctor gains and loses companions in the usual cycle._

* * *

Bill Potts | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 15 April 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: 2,100 - 4,500,002,100+)

When the Doctor sees a young Bill Potts sneaking into his lectures he forces himself to look away, unwilling to watch another life wither in front of his ancient eyes. 

Missy | Earth Year: 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: 2,100 - 4,500,002,100+)

Missy remains in the vault, never allowed into the TARDIS. She grows old and bitter and regenerates into something twisted and violent, unfettered by morals.

* * *

_// RESET: The TARDIS croons to the Doctor until he lets Bill in._

* * *

Missy | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 10 June 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: 2,100 - 4,500,002,100+)

Missy is granted access to the ship where she can temper the madness just enough to let a sliver of mercy creep in. 

It’s too much mercy, in fact. Missy’s former incarnation uses it to his advantage, killing her/himself. 

Missy regenerates into a madman, infuriated by the duality of his/her own betrayal. And he burns Gallifrey himself. 


	11. The Doctor | May 2008

* * *

_Reality is fickle. It cracks at the slightest provocation. The fibres twist easily one way, but not the other._

_Strange, moody filaments hold the past and present apart, but they shatter when pressed just so._

* * *

The Doctor | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 17 May 2008 (The Doctor’s Age: 903)

Donna has once again headed off to sleep and the Doctor is once again haunting the corridors, looking for entertainment. Which is entirely unfair and exactly the reason he has companions in the first place.

The TARDIS nudges him toward the glass and sand room, clearly trying to distract him, and he allows himself to be led. The colorful sand is smooth under his feet and the arching glass spirals are as lovely as ever. Tucked behind the third spire on the left, he’s surprised to see a familiar ginger, tipping an hourglass over between her hands. For a moment, the sand seems to flow up instead of down. 

“Can’t sleep after all?” the Doctor asks, mostly rhetorically. 

Donna startles, tipping the hourglass on its side and looking around wide-eyed. “Doctor?”

He already has his hands up, palms out. “I know; I know. Don’t sneak up. But it hardly counts as ‘sneaking’ if I announce myself!” 

She gives him a narrow-eyed look. “When did I agree to _that_ definition?”

The TARDIS chimes in with the current space-time coordinates. 

“Er,” says the Doctor, “Sorry about that. Think she caught the ‘when’ and just assumed…” 

He tries to remind the ship that the humans aren’t used to a telepathic interface, but she brushes him off like a great interdimensional horse shaking her mane at a fly. 

Donna tilts her head, apparently trying to listen, and he coughs. “So then. What brings you to this room?” He gestures broadly. “Looking for glass or sand?”

She looks at the array of glass vessels and says, “I guess I was looking for time.”

He grins. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right ship for _that_.” 

For a moment, Donna seems older than she will ever be. 

She holds up the hourglass and the illusion breaks. “Does the TARDIS make these?”

The Doctor makes his way over, fishing out his glasses with one hand. He takes the hourglass in question, holding it up to the false light. 

“I think I made this one,” he says, tapping his tongue behind his teeth, trying to remember when and why. 

Donna doesn’t immediately reply and when he glances down at her she’s staring at his mouth. 

The Doctor snaps it closed. “I brushed my teeth,” he says, feeling a bit like a schoolboy being inspected before bed. 

Donna jerks her eyes back up to his and then away before returning. “Should hope so,” she says, coughing lightly into her fist. “Anchovies and walnuts are not a winning combination.”

He sniffs. “I did say ‘thank you,’ didn’t I?” 

She scoffs. “I don’t think you’ve ever said ‘thank you’ to me outside of the times you thought you’d never see me again.” 

The Doctor frowns, trying to recall. “That can’t be right!”

Donna holds up three fingers, counting off, “That first time you refused to come in for Christmas dinner, that time you thought I was going home, and right before you got on the Sontaran ship.” She waggles three fingers in his face. “Not even one full hand.” 

He frowns harder. “No, you’re forgetting about… the, um… the……” He trails off, running back conversations and coming up blank. 

Donna’s smirking at him.

“Well, you don’t thank me either!” he says.

Her smirk stretches into a wry smile. “And what exactly would _I_ thank _you_ for?”

“Well,” he blusters, “I’ve shown you the Universe, haven’t I?”

She puts down one finger, holding up just the two. “You’ve shown me Earth and two other places.” She wiggles the fingers in his face. “Two.” 

The Doctor scoffs. “That’s two more than most humans get! And you’re forgetting about the _formation_ of the Earth. Surely that’s it’s own category!” 

Donna gives him a stern look for twenty-six seconds and then breaks out in a wide grin. “No, you’re right. With the planet formation it’s all even. Totally worth the thankless work of saving your hide over and over… and over again.”

He straightens up indignantly. “I save your life all the time!” 

Donna just grins wider. “Not as often as I save yours.” 

The Doctor scoffs. “Well that’s just― Are we keeping score now?” 

“If we are, I’m winning,” she says, slightly sing-song.

The Doctor tilts his head back, tapping his tongue against the back of his teeth. “That _can’t_ be right…” He tries to tally it up and comes to the odd conclusion that Donna seems to need much less rescuing than past companions. All the same… “I’ve saved your entire planet several times over, you know. Has to count for something.” 

There’s a pause and when he glances down Donna’s back to staring, clearly not listening. 

He shuts his mouth with a click, startling her into looking away again. 

Very odd. 

He swallows around a slightly tense throat. “I suppose… If I didn’t say it earlier… Thank you, Donna Noble.”

She smiles that small, slightly embarrassed smile she has. “Yeah. You too, Spaceman.” 

There’s a beat and then Donna switches the hourglass to her left hand, reaching for his with her right. Her fingers wrap around his, slightly cool and oddly electric, with that faint current she seems to have sometimes. 

“I wouldn’t give this up for anything,” she says, earnest and sincere. “It’s important that you know that.” 

Something about the way she says it sends a shiver down his spine. A cold trickle of foreboding. He can’t quite meet her eyes, glancing instead at the hourglass held loosely at her side. 

The light catches and for a moment it looks like the granules are flowing up, against gravity. 

The Doctor frowns faintly, opening his mouth to ask, and gets entirely blindsided by Donna stretching up to press a kiss to his lips for the second time in under 24 hours. He makes a startled sound, uncomfortably close to a yelp, but she doesn’t immediately pull away and he has just long enough to remember himself, returning the pressure ever-so-slightly. 

The contact tingles, electric. 

There’s a dull thud that’s apparently the hourglass dropping into the sand and then Donna’s hand sweeps a staticky path from his jaw to neck, pulling him into alignment. 

The Doctor still isn’t entirely certain what is happening, but he tilts into it, getting a soft little sound out of Donna that he’s sure he’s never heard before.

His hands come up, framing her face, and in the next movement his left index finger catches accidentally at her temple.

There’s an odd whine in the back of his mind and then a sharp crack that reverberates through his teeth. He pulls back with a grimace, barely registering Donna’s hands jerking back with a jolt. 

“Sorry,” he says, but it’s Donna’s voice, sounding very far away. 

His vision whites out and when he comes back to himself he’s lying in the sand.

* * *

It’s not the first time the Doctor’s taken an unexpected kip in a random room, but it seems particularly strange that he picked the third sandiest room for it. An hourglass is half-buried in front of him, seeming to indicate that hours have passed. 

The Doctor rarely dreams of anything but fire and darkness, but he has the strangest feeling that he dreamt of Donna. Odd, disjointed images and sensations linger just beyond his conscious recollection. 

Had he seen her right before he fell asleep? Or was that just part of the dream…?

He heads to the galley and fiddles with eggs and edible vegetation until she appears.

“Donna!” he greets her, too loudly if her jump is any indication. 

“Doctor,” she says, voice scratchy but not particularly hostile, “G’morning.” 

“Morning!” he says, not bothering to explain, again, that there’s really no such thing on the TARDIS. Instead, he throws the ingredients into the skillet with a sizzle. 

She comes up beside him, nudging his arm with his, peering around curiously. “Is that a scramble?” 

He grins. “It is indeed!” 

She snorts and leans into him, as casual as ever. “Any particular occasion?” 

The Doctor isn’t quite sure how to ask the question he actually wants to ask, so he just says, “Consider it a ‘thank you.’ Belated or advanced, depending on one’s point of view.” 

“Oh good lord, what are you buttering me up for now?” she groans, but tilts her head into his shoulder for just a moment, unmistakably pleased. 


	12. Missy | 2017

* * *

_A strong enough will unburdened by reality can do anything, weaving the threads of fate in intricate, impossible knots until something new is wedged between what can never be and what always will._

* * *

Missy | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 20 June 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: Something Like 2,100 or 4,500,002,100)

The Doctor is plotting something; Missy can tell. He’s in an intolerably good mood and she just knows he’s gearing up for some big reveal. 

She isn’t hiding in the bowels of the ship. She’s just… exploring. Getting some very necessary exploring in, while he works out whatever it is that he’s working out. 

The ship has been more obedient lately, allowing her to roam without routing her back to the main corridors every few doors. Today she even seems to be encouraging her, perhaps also put off by whatever it is that has the Doctor so keyed up. 

Missy follows the mental nudges, taking care to pause and peruse along the way. It wouldn’t do to have the ship thinking she’ll come when called. Bad enough the Doctor seems to think so. 

After several hours, she suspects she’s in the operational wings. The overlay has changed slightly and the life support seems to be downgraded too low for anyone but a Time Lord to tolerate. 

She’s getting a bit curious, if she’s honest. Her TARDIS had never allowed her this close to the mainframe structures. 

The Doctor’s TARDIS is just as cocksure as he is; allowing her dangerously close like the show of faith alone will be enough to temper her darker urges. She considers breaking something, just to prove both of them wrong, but a new door draws her attention.

It’s a stasis chamber. An archaic affair, designed by humans at the brink of enlightenment, before the Time Agency erased all of that. 

Time Lords have no use for stasis and the Doctor would never consider keeping one of his human pets alive past its expiration date.

Or rather, that’s what he’d like them to believe. 

One of the chambers is occupied. 

Some long ignored instinct flares up at the sight, urging her to run far, far away.

Missy moves closer, no slave to her instincts. 

The capsule is translucent and frosted over, but it just takes one swipe of her palm to reveal the creature within.

It’s the Spirit. 

Well. That explains the urge to run. 

Missy takes a closer look and realizes immediately that no, this is _just_ the human shell. The Time Lord essence isn’t just a fractured echo; it’s nowhere to be found. 

This is the human core that’s been destabilizing her. 

“Ohhh,” she breathes aloud, “Look at you.” 

The TARDIS thrums around her.

“And what is it, exactly, that you expect me to do about it?”

An insistent note presses at the back of her mind, trying to compel.

“That won’t work on me,” she tsks. “Locked out of direct interface, remember?” 

The humming changes pitch, taking on a grinding quality. 

“Groan all you want; it wasn’t _my_ idea.”

There’s a strange sensation in her head, like the ship is feeling its way around the edges of the block, looking for a weakness. Missy leaves her to it and starts poking around the capsule. It seems to be functioning just fine, holding the human in suspended animation. 

“However did you get in here?” she wonders, looking for some sort of display or monitor. There’s a panel built into the side that shows a readout of vitals, but it takes Missy three goes to convince herself she’s reading them correctly.

The human is dying. Her entire neural network is completely fried. The cryogen chamber has trapped her in the moments before death; held her there perpetually. 

Missy can’t help but let out a low whistle. “Now this is a level of cruelty I just did not think he had in him.” 

The shifting presence against her mind sharpens suddenly, and forces itself through. 

The TARDIS floods her with concepts too abstract for words, and for one long moment, Missy fears she might have underestimated the madness fueling her.

The pressure backs off just as quickly, leaving her reeling, braced against the pod. 

“It wasn’t the Doctor,” she realizes, “It was you.”

The TARDIS thrums affirmation, nearly bowling her over again. The presence lessens slightly, with an air like embarrassment.

Missy laughs. “Oh, you really are _mad_.” 

The TARDIS nudges her once more, gaining some level of control, but she’s clumsy, like a bull trying to pet a butterfly and Missy has no interest in being crushed. 

“What exactly do you want me to do here? She’s dead, you know. You do understand the concept of ‘dead,’ yes?” 

_// A sinking sensation, like being adrift in space with no stars in sight._

“Close enough,” she says, and tries not to let the vertigo take her under. “Well, no matter what the Doctor really, really wants to believe deep down in his bleeding little hearts― we can’t stop death. We can only push it back. And this one…” She whistles again. “This one’s backed up to the very end of her thread.” 

The TARDIS bows around her, warping reality as easily as heated glass. 

“Whinge all you want― it won’t bring her back.” 

Fractures appear between the planes, forcing space where none should be. It’s maddening and grotesque.

Missy can’t look away. 

“Why do you even care?” she asks. “What does one human matter?” 

She’s flooded with concepts too complex for any one mind. 

_// A chaotic jumble of curiosity and wonder, fueled by an implacable desire to fix and heal― her perception of the Doctor._

“That’s not what I asked.” 

_// Darkness swells within the ephemeral concept, dragging the eleven-dimensional equivalent of a moral compass off course. Little human hands guide it gently back in line._

“But why _this_ human? There are humans littered all over this universe. He has his pick of humans.”

The TARDIS focuses, connecting directly to her optic nerve, flickering through faces almost too quickly for Missy to register them. The Freak is among them, and that pesky young woman from the year that never was. Old companions, she assumes. Each of them hardened, sharpened. 

The Doctor selects such exceptional materials, and forges the finest weaponry. 

With one exception.

The Universe burns around the unassuming redhead and all it does is make her more. Truer. Kinder. A new element, clarified down to the essence. 

_ // A name bubbles up: Donna Noble. _

Missy startles, looking at the face in the chamber with more interest. She’s heard the name. Of course she has. There are worlds dedicated to her and strict laws forbidding contact.

She’d looked for her once, spent a few decades hunting for the myth, but the Shadow Proclamation had done its work well. There was no trace of Donna Noble. Nothing _to_ trace. 

Until now.

“I thought you were a myth.” She looks down at the unremarkable face, frozen in the last breath before oblivion. 

The TARDIS creaks, protesting. 

“Why did you bring me here?” Missy asks again. 

_// A disorientating jumble of concepts― atomic collisions, cellular restructuring. The building blocks of the universe, broken down and rebuilt. Her best approximation of regeneration._

“She can’t regenerate. She’s human.” 

_// Another jumbled relay, this time involving a severed hand. Partial regeneration. A biological Metacrisis._

“Oh,” Missy breathes, “You dreadfully recursive thing, you.” 

The body in the chamber is still pathetically limited to three dimensions, except for one element― something small, but so distilled it hurts to look directly at it. 

There’s a part of Missy that longs to take it and crush it. Just looking at it makes her inescapably aware of how far she is from that uncontaminated essence. She wants to strike it from existence to hide it from herself. 

It flickers, barely an ember, but the weakening presence is somehow brighter for it. 

Missy forces herself to look away, refocusing on the corpse around it. 

It’s an untenable mess. The creature cannot and must not be, but she’s forced her way in between the rigid lines of reality, fracturing them beyond repair. There’s no way back; no path forward. She is trapped forever in the space between.

It’s the most magnificent disaster Missy’s ever seen. And she knows just how to fan the flame.

Missy smiles, pressing her own regenerative life force into her hands. 

“Open it.” 

* * *

Missy wakes up from an unexpected restorative coma with a disastrous tangle of timelines splitting her head. 

That wretched Spirit must have come around again, always giving her the most exotic hangovers. She sucks a breath in through her teeth, feeling the ache up into her skull, like she’s bitten through a live wire. 

“Decided to rejoin us, have you?” The Doctor’s already intolerable brogue grates like sandpaper on raw nerves. 

“Firmly undecided,” she says, clenching her jaw around the six-inch spikes that seem to have worked their way into her skull. 

There’s a huffy sigh and then a great deal of rustling which echoes around her eardrums. 

Missy makes the herculean effort to drag her wrists up, crossing them over her eyes and applying as much pressure as she can physically manage. 

“That’s not going to help,” the Doctor says, far too close again. 

“Go away.” She takes a lazy swipe in his general direction, catching more fabric than skin under her nails, but it gets the point across. “I’m in no mood to deal with you just now.” 

“No?” he asks, still too close, and not sounding nearly concerned enough about it. “Suppose I’ll down this restorative shot myself then, shall I?” 

Missy edges one arm just high enough to allow her to squint one eye in his general direction. He’s holding a medicinal cup and looking unbearably smug about it. 

“Give it.”

“Oh, would you like this?” he mocks, wiggling it. 

Missy snarls. “You realize I could snap through your carotid with my bare teeth.”

“You could,” he says, entirely unconcerned, “But I’d imagine you’d get blood in the cup. Would taste terrible.” 

She crosses wrists back over her eyes.

Several minutes pass and then the rustling resumes. Something is placed just beside her right hand with a dull, plasticky thud and the rustling moves pointedly to a new area on her left. 

Missy gives it another minute, on principle, and then picks the cup up between two fingers, tipping it back into her mouth. 

After a few minutes more, the roaring fire in her head calms down to a more manageable simmer. 

“Not even a hint of poison,” she observes drily. “This is why no one calls you the Oncoming Storm anymore.”

“You think after all these years I couldn’t come up with an undetectable poison?” he asks, likely from his desk considering the distance. 

Missy realizes something she hadn’t quite put together yet; she’s in the Doctor’s room. 

She edges her arms down, blinking at the low ambient light reflecting off the of the chrome. The Doctor, sure enough, is hunched over, carefully pretending to write something. At his desk. 

In his room.

Sheets are smooth against her fingertips, a cool pillow is curved under her head. 

“Prefer your ladies unconscious, do you?” she muses. “You could have just asked.”

The Doctor makes a satisfyingly indignant sound somewhere between a huff and a sputter. “It’s been the better part of two days! And you don’t have a room! Would you _prefer_ the medbay?”

“Two days…” Missy frowns, trying to work that out. What _had_ she been doing with that pesky Spirit? 

The Doctor is still grumbling and fumbling his papers around. “Yes, two days! How on Earth did you break the block on the TARDIS interface? She’s not calibrated to you, you know. She could have overloaded your synapses entirely!” 

The TARDIS rumbles underneath, once again locked out of her mind and sounding distinctly disgruntled about it. 

Missy tries to remember what she’d been trying to do, but it’s all jumbled up and out of order. The space just behind her ears throbs at the effort. 

“It’s your own fault,” Missy says, because honestly, it probably is. “You’ve only had me locked away in isolation for a few centuries, but you’ve done quite the number on this mad ship.” 

The TARDIS rumbles again and the Doctor strokes two fingers over the chrome casing like she’s an interdimensional house cat. 

“You could just say you’re bored,” the Doctor says mildly. “You don’t have to short circuit your brain just to get attention.” 

“I’ll do as I please,” Missy reminds him with the most dignified sniff she can manage without raising her head. 


	13. The Doctor | 2059

* * *

_The Spirit merges back into the flesh. Layered, fractured lenses finally align in crystal clarity._

* * *

The Doctor | Earth Year: 2059 (The Doctor’s Age: 906)

The Doctor reenters the TARDIS with Adelaide Brooke’s shot still ringing in his ears. So much for the Time Lord Victorious. A few clicks and switches later, he’s safely tucked in the vortex, away from anyone he can hurt. 

The ship croons cold comfort, but he appreciates the effort. 

“I could just stay with you,” he tells her. “What do you think? A few centuries in the vortex, just you and me?”

“I think you’d make it three days. Tops.” An impossibly familiar voice comes from behind him. 

He whirls around to find Donna Noble standing at the top of the ramp, smirking. 

“Ohhh no,” he groans. “Please not the holograms. Not today.” 

The TARDIS chitters, offended, and Donna scoffs. “Oi, I’m not a hologram.”

The Doctor curls into the jumpseat, pushing his hands into his hair. “Please don’t,” he begs the ship. “I know you think you’re helping, but this is _not_ helping.”

He nearly goes into cardiac arrest when a very solid hand brushes over his knuckles, tingling. 

“What?!” He jerks upright, snatching the hand between both of his, and it remains impossibly solid. Tendons flex under the skin, oddly electric. “Donna?!?” 

She quirks that odd little smile that always looked faintly embarrassed to be so genuine. “Doctor.”

“What?” he jumps up, still holding her hand in one hand while the other claps onto her neck, her face, her hair― all impossibly solid. “How?! Are you―“ he lets go of her hand, clutching her face between both of his now. “Are you all right?! How are you here?! How can you be here?!?”

She laughs a little, and then a bit more at his indignant sputtering. “I told you I was gonna stay forever. You’ve got to learn to _listen_.”

“Oh, God,” he gapes at her. “I’ve finally lost my last grip on anything like sanity, haven’t I?” He can’t seem to quite let go, tilting her head slightly, testing for incongruent angles. 

“Probably, but, it’s really me,” Donna says, but doesn’t fight the movement. “I’ve had a few enhancements, but it’s me.” 

The Doctor frowns, reaching for his sonic as he starts engaging his higher senses. “Enhancements... What―?“

A tangle of timelines jump into focus, impossibly wrought. Horrifically mangled. 

“ _Donna!_ ” 

Instead of crumbling into the grating, she just gives herself a little shake, knocking a paradoxical layer loose as carelessly as blowing dust off a book. 

The backlash is dizzying, but she just smiles. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not so bad.” 

He’s still staring, trying to take it in. It’s like looking directly into the heart of a dying star. Every instinct drives him back, but at the core it’s Donna. And she should be dead, but she’s fine. Better than fine. 

She’s laughing at him. 

“Oi,” he breathes, weakly. 

“You want a minute?” she asks. “I get the impression it can be a bit disorientating.” 

That raises a whole new host of questions, but he’s having trouble taking in enough air. 

“Ah,” she says, “Sorry.” She moves to step back, but he snatches her closer instead, suddenly terrified that she’ll blow away like any other mirage. 

The effect is dizzying, like teetering over the edge of an event horizon. 

“Easy there,” she says, catching his sides.

He slumps into the jumpseat, dragging her with him. “Oh that’s...“ His head swims and the floor dips underfoot. “That’s not―“ 

He drops unconscious like every nerve ending has been severed. 

* * *

The Doctor wakes slowly; each breath is a struggle. 

He stares up at the ceiling in his bedroom, trying to remember how he got there. It feels like every synapse has to fire through oatmeal.

“Bit better?” an impossible voice calls quietly, and he jerks his head up to find Donna hovering against the wall, cloaked in tattered futures and disconnected pasts. 

“Oh God,” he says. “I tried to go back for you and created a paradox, didn’t I? I’ve killed you.” 

She laughs and rattles four parallel planes loose. “Typical. Even you think I’m some ghost. I’ve been trying to get your companions to call me the Spirit,” she says, entirely too pleased for someone who should be rotted and withered and long blown away. 

“What??” he forces himself up onto his elbows and nearly passes back out. 

“Easy, easy,” she chides. “Not sure why it’s so bad this time. You didn’t even notice before.” 

The room spins. “ _Before?!_ ”

“Ah,” she says. “New tactic. Just occurred to me. It might be best if you try not to think about it.” 

Something strange and warped that was probably supposed to be a laugh barks out of him. 

Donna hums pensively. “Do you want me to go?”

“No!” he shouts, lurching upright. 

She ducks back, trying to keep her distance, but doesn’t make for the door. “Okay, okay. Listen,” she puts her hands up in the placating gesture he makes all the time, “I don’t know why it’s so bad right now, but I need you to try focusing on something else. Anything else.” 

“What a fantastic idea,” he says, sarcastically, “What should I do after that? Try very, very hard to stop having a nose? It seems equally likely to work out!” 

“Well, getting your back up is sure to work,” she retorts. 

He points an accusatory finger at her. “I should have known you’d be a sarcastic ghost!” 

“Oh pffft,” she blows her cheeks out at him, “Get the man an orb. He’s a certified prognosticator.” 

“Not now, ghost of Donna! I’m trying to think!” 

“Spirit, thank you.” Donna rolls her eyes, looking entirely unimpressed in a way that no ghost should be able to manage. “Why does everyone think I’m a ghost?” she asks the ceiling.

The TARDIS trills two short notes and one long tone. 

“That’s hardly fair. I’ve always been pale.” 

The Doctor can’t help but shift perspectives and he’s met with the baffling sight of his time and space machine trying to straighten the fraying threads of reality clinging to Donna. She doesn’t quite fit within the dimensions, but the effects are as obvious as waves being blown by an unseen wind.

Donna shifts under the ministrations, but only to give her more direct access. 

The Doctor lurches to his feet. “Medbay. Now.” 

* * *

“This couldn’t be a bigger waste of time,” Donna grumbles, for the fourth time. 

The Doctor ignores her and continues trying to get his scanners to register her as anything but a glitch. “This one seems to think you’re a Time Lord with a malfunctioning endocrine system… or an Eternal with no head…” He taps through the screens. “This one thinks you’re an elderly human having a stroke.” He pulls up a separate monitor and grimaces. “These two say you’re a Neverwere.” 

“See if you can get one of them to say I’m a unicorn. I used to really fancy unicorns,” Donna drawls, entirely unconcerned by the fact that she should, by all rights, be dead a thousand times over. 

“Donna,” he growls. “This is serious! You should be dead! Worse than dead! Wiped from existence!” 

“I guess I didn’t think we’d skip right to snogging, but I have to say I thought there’d be a lot less of you arguing with me about how dead I should be.”

It takes a moment for that to register and his neck nearly snaps. “You-- What?! _What?!?!_ ”

She squints at him. “This _is_ a timestream where we traveled to Midnight, right?” She tilts her head back toward the ceiling. “Right?”

The TARDIS rumbles an affirmation.

“That was―!” The vertigo hits again, nearly knocking him off his feet. “That was you?! I mean― _this_ you? That was this version of you?!” 

“Might’ve had a little bit of trouble with the concept of linear time,” Donna mumbles. “But we got it worked out. And we’re in sync now!” 

He gapes at her, trying to run back over his own timeline, feeling for disruptions. It’s a bit of a needle-in-the-haystack situation. When he tries to trace back Donna’s timeline it turns into a hunt for a needle in a needle factory. And they’re all magnetized. 

“It really would be better if you could try not to think about it,” she says, and he realizes he’s bent nearly in two as the room spins around him. 

He tries to straighten, but ends up just resting his forehead on the cot instead. “You realize that’s not exactly helpful advice.” 

The room spins again and he props himself on his arms, kneeling with all the dignity he can manage.

Donna doesn't comment, apparently just waiting for him to get it together. 

“I missed you,” he admits.

She sighs. “If you’d wrap up the moping, you might notice I’m actually right here.” 

He’s suddenly afraid he’s going to start sobbing. “I just wanted you to live,” he says, “And now you’re worse than dead.”

“Rude,” she grumbles, entirely too lightly. 

“You’ve met me in the future, haven’t you?” It’s less of a question, more of a statement. His own timeline is strung so precariously it feels like it could shatter. 

“Not directly,” she says, and then reluctantly continues, “…But I might have met a companion… or two…”

He can feel the threads against his skin, sharp like garottes. “You can’t stay,” he mumbles, miserably. “You’re part of established events. You can’t cross both our timelines.”

“I can do anything,” she says, and pulls the sharpest threads taut until they snap. 

“No, don’t!” He’s on his feet, looking for Reapers or cracks in time or whatever horde of travesties she’s unwittingly unleashed. 

It takes several minutes to realize that there’s nothing. 

No consequences.

No effect whatsoever.

The Universe spins on, unconcerned.

He whirls to stare at her and she just looks back, impossible and incontrovertible. 

“It really is fine,” she says. “I know what I’m doing.” She hesitates and then adds a begrudging, “Mostly.” 

“But… you can’t…” He flickers through senses, looking for the flaw, for the inevitable consequences that are going to swallow her whole or tear her apart. 

She’s warped out of time, wedged between planes. And it should be breaking her. It should have broken her long ago. 

Donna looks unreasonably judgmental for someone who should be shattered beyond recognition. “Are you going to be like this all day?” 

“You can’t be here,” he says, sounding miserable even to his own ears. “You’re crossing both our timelines. You’ve already seen future versions of me. It’s all fixed now.” 

Donna looks a little pained, but nods. “I know. I do know. But… I think I can make this one window work.” She gets a look of concentration on her face and the universe bows in and out around her, like a ship deck warped in the moment after a torpedo, just before the structure fails. 

The resounding crack doesn’t sound though. The lines hold, bent and warped, but unfractured. 

The Doctor stares at her, something impossible rising in his chest. “How…?”

Donna smiles, impossibly bright. “Have you ever met Elizabeth I?” 

He frowns. “Just once. She tried to arrest me! …Why?”

Donna smiles a bit wider. “Been told I look a bit like her. You know how you plant false memories to cover meetings with future versions of yourself?”

He nods, slowly, already beginning to suspect. “That… could work…” A grin stretches across his face without his permission. “Donna,” he beams, “That could work!” 

Donna grins back, forcing him to squint, and grabs his hand.


	14. The Doctor | 1562

The Doctor | Earth Year: 1562 (The Doctor’s Age: 906)

Donna kicks them off into the vortex the moment the doors close behind him and that’s all going to take some getting used to. She turns to him with a flourish and says, “I told the Good Queen Bess you cheated on me. With some young blonde.” 

“What?!” the Doctor shouts.

“That should do it,” she says. “We gingers stick together on this sort of thing.” 

“Donna!” he whines. “I never tell famous monarchs strange lies about you!” 

She looks supremely unimpressed. “What, do you want to stop off and actually chat up some blonde to make yourself feel better?” 

“ _Don-na!_ ” 

She snickers, and for a moment he’s struck with the very strange feeling of missing her while she’s standing right there. 

“So,” she says, “Nearly infinite time on our hands. What would you like to do?” 

The Doctor gets that swooping, heady feeling again, like the gravity is acting up. 

Donna takes four large steps back. “Are you going to start passing out again?” 

“Course not,” he says, and pries his hand off the railing where it seems to be holding him up for some reason. 

“Can you at least _try_ to calm down?” she asks. 

He sputters, stumbling back into the jumpseat. 

“Have to say, I’m getting a bit nostalgic for the days I wasn’t fully here.”

He barely hears her over the roaring discord of paradoxes wrapped in paradoxes. 

“Donna,” he manages to ask, “What did you do?” 

She opens her mouth and then grimaces, “I’m not sure I can explain without tearing something.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of his head. 

The Doctor tries the TARDIS. She sings to him, the ethereal equivalent of pleased. 

_// A single flame, caught in amber. One last breath, given by choice, stretched perpetually across eleven dimensions._

“No,” he gasps, horrified. “Oh, Donna, no…” He folds in on himself, trying to escape the weight of his own failings.

“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic.” Donna pries his hands away from his hair, and an impossible weight settles next to him, heady with its own gravitational force. 

“I’ve destroyed you!” he wheezes, too dry for tears. 

“You sure gave it your best shot, but no, you didn’t,” she shushes him, wrapping her arms around tentatively and then with more strength when he doesn’t pull away. “I wanted to stay. Want to stay. It turns out I have more of a say in that than either one of us would have guessed.” 

“No, no, no, no,” he mumbles, but can’t keep his hands from pulling her closer. She’s not quite the right temperature, fluctuating wildly between too hot and far too cold, and there’s a pull that makes the back of his teeth ache, but she’s solidly _there_. 

She grips him back just the same, if a bit restlessly, like she can’t quite decide what to touch first. On a delay, he realizes he’s been silent for far too long and forces himself to sit up. 

She lets go immediately and makes to rise. “Do you want me to go―“

“No!” he snatches her hands into his, and she startles, but resettles. 

Looking at Donna makes the Doctor dizzy in a way that Jack only ever hinted at. His head hurts and his eyes sting, but he can’t bear to look away. Under the layers of painfully sharp lines, Donna looks as pleased to see him as ever. More so, if he’s honest. His eyes water with the effort to focus, but she’s smiling that gentle little smile that he’s missed more than he would have ever thought possible.

“Do you want to go to the moon lounge?” she suggests and he nods, following her for lack of anything better to do. 

The TARDIS shuffles it closer, letting them in through the first door on the left. 

Donna flits just ahead. “It helps ground me sometimes.” 

The Doctor remembers her saying that once. Or at least he thinks he does. The memory is oddly sharp, like she is now. “Was that… How many times have you and I spoken?” 

She sniffs, perching sideways in one of the false, circular windows with her feet up and her knees bent. “What sort of a question is that?” 

“You know what I mean!” His head is starting to hurt again, just carding through memories. It’s like looking for a single photo in a flip book.

There’s a pause and then a quiet, “A few times. A handful, maybe. You couldn’t always see me, but sometimes…”

He comes closer, trying not to feel like he’s approaching a black hole. It helps that black holes very rarely sit sideways in windows with their elbows on their knees. 

He climbs up next to her, mirroring her position. “How many times have you crossed back?” 

Donna tilts her head back and for a moment he thinks she’s ignoring him, but the TARDIS whirrs, flickering through space-time coordinates. After the Library, Agatha Christie, Midnight…

He shudders in spite of himself and Donna tenses, pushing herself back as far as she can manage in the curved space. She shifts like she might get up and he catches the nearest ankle, like grounding himself in a lightning storm… By holding onto metal. In the middle of a lake. 

“Don’t go,” he begs. “Just give me a minute…” 

Donna goes preternaturally still, not even breathing, but he forces himself not to think about that, trying to focus.

“Is it… Am I _hurting_ you?” Donna asks, and he realizes he’s got his head braced between his knees. 

“N-no,” he manages to say around an oddly thick tongue, “It’s just… an altitude adjustment is all.” He’s gripping her ankle too hard, but he can’t seem to let go. 

He focuses on his breathing, trying to shutter down his senses like he learned to with Jack. But it’s not quite _working_.

Something brushes his hair, tentatively at first, barely connecting, and then lightly stroking. He can feel each individual fingertip as she traces meaningless shapes.

It helps to focus on that somehow. He tilts his head just enough to sneak a look up at her. She starts to pull her hand back but he catches her wrist. “No, don’t― It’s nice…”

Her expression is unreadable, but she resumes stroking. Petting, really. His eyes water at the sensation. 

“It’s worse than Jack, isn’t it?” she says, not really a question even though it’s phrased like one. 

The Doctor tries not to flinch and suspects he’s failed. “I got used to Jack. I just need a minute.” 

Donna hesitates for just a moment and then resumes her gentle petting. “We’ve all the time in the world.” 

He can’t quite let go of her wrist. The unnatural double pulse thuds against his fingertips, nearly ―but not quite― comforting. 

* * *

It seems to take forever for the Doctor’s center of gravity to stabilize. Every time he thinks he’s found it, he remembers some out-of-place interaction and loses his equilibrium all over again. 

Donna sits in the window, impossibly patient, and that’s the most disorientating part of all. She seems to either not notice or be completely unconcerned by the passage of time. It screams her immortality more than anything else. More than the fractured pasts and recursive futures tangled around her. More than the cosmos reflected in the backs of her eyes. More than the way she occasionally blurs while sitting perfectly still. 

“Have you even _tried_ not thinking about it?” she asks with a sigh and he realizes he’s gritting his teeth hard enough for his jaw to ache. 

He drops his head back down, between their knees this time, and he can feel the staticky, unnatural energy powering her. It whites out his vision.

“Not really an option,” he manages to grit out. 

Donna shifts slightly, the hand in his hair ghosting down the back of his neck, slipping just beneath his collar. “You were fine when you didn’t know not to be,” she reminds him. “Could I interest you in a distraction?” 

He angles his head slightly further onto her knee to look up. “What, do you want to watch a movie?” 

Donna snorts and strokes two fingers down his trapezius and he shivers for an entirely different reason. 

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?” she asks as casually as if she’s offering to make cocoa. “We’ve done it before. Or... will do it? What _is_ the right verb tense? The TARDIS isn't much for grammar." 

He presses his eyes into the bone until that bout of nausea recedes. “Not helping,” he says tightly. 

“Well, that’s because you’re thinking about it,” Donna says, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. She shifts forward, dipping the hand under his collar lower and tracing the shell of his ear with the other. He quivers at the touch. 

“Donna…”

“Want me to stop?” she asks.

He can’t quite manage that. 

There’s an expectant pause and then another shift of gravity just before her lips brush his cheekbone, breath ghosting across his skin. She holds for just a moment and then shifts back, tracing a line to his ear, breathing just so on the sensitive shell. 

He shivers again, nearly violently. 

Her lips curl, accompanied by the barest touch of a clever tongue. 

His grip spasms around her wrist and ankle. 

She pulls him closer with both hands, knocking him off balance and when he starts to slip she just slides down with him, curling over.

The Doctor’s head cracks back into the frame, but the pain is focused and localized― familiar. And he realizes the ache in his teeth is fading; the light no longer seems intolerably bright. 

The Doctor pulls Donna fully on top of himself, trying to touch as much as possible to overload his receptors. He leans into the stinging, sharp lines until they barely register. Her skin is so cold it burns his mouth, and when he presses closer it thrums, electrified. 

“Could you―“ He has to tear his mouth away to actually speak. “Could you use your teeth?” 

There’s a pause and then a faint nip at the underside of his jaw. 

“No, I mean…” He cracks his head back again, exposing as much neck as possible. “Could you bite…?”

Donna goes still and then jerks back to look at him. “I’m not going to _try_ to hurt you.”

“Nothing extreme,” he assures her. “It just― It’s better localized.”

Donna just pulls further back. “You shouldn’t have to―”

“Please?” he cuts her off. “I’m not asking you to draw blood, just―“ He cracks his head back again, whimpering. “I’ll give myself a concussion at this rate.”

Donna leans forward, but just presses a gentle kiss to his shoulder, his neck, his jaw. “I don’t need to hurt you.” She shifts, moving lower. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Her breath is warm and tickling over his chest and abdomen as she unbuttons her way lower. Distracting, but not enough. 

“Donna,” he tries again, “Really, just a nip or two. Or a scratch, if you prefer. Nails or teeth. Teeth or nails― whatever you want, just…” He presses himself back, exposing his throat, diaphragm, median nerve. Anything. 

She pauses, fingers curling between buttons so her knuckles brush his skin. “Do you like that? Normally, I mean.” 

The Doctor hesitates, debating the merits of lies or half-truths, but that’s all the answer she needs. 

There’s a tentative brush of electrifying contact, but she pulls back again, further this time. “It’s not working, is it?” she asks, barely audible.

He forces himself upright, head spinning again. “Please don’t go.”

Donna gives him a long, unreadable look. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

The Doctor wraps his arms around her, holding her as close as he can, gritting his teeth against the relentless spikes driving into each nerve. “It’s all right,” he says, uselessly. “I’m all right.” 

Donna sighs, expanding and contracting against him in agonizing clarity. “You’re always all right.” 

The Doctor buries his face in her shoulder and wills himself numb. 


	15. Missy | 2017

* * *

_The crushing weight of the universe is felt most strongly in the fibres between tissues. It constricts the hearts. Burns in the throat._

_The shining future dims, bogged down by the irrepressible now._

* * *

Missy | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 24 June 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: Over 2,100 or 4,500,002,100)

Missy is idly brooding about the Doctor and his precious secrets when his most intriguing secret appears in the doorway of the false observatory. 

“Oh, perfect!” She claps. “I was just thinking about you.” 

The Spirit blinks at her, slowly, like someone not quite awake. 

“Still having a spot of trouble with your timestreams?” Missy prompts. 

The Spirit blinks again, more slowly. “It keeps going wrong.”

Missy tuts and beckons. “Come here, beastie. Let’s have a proper look.” 

She approaches slowly, but not warily. More like she’s having trouble remembering how to move. 

“Ohhh, darling, you’re in quite the state.” Missy can’t hold back a grimace. The poor thing is practically falling apart, wrapped in paradoxes within paradoxes. She seems to be held together by nothing more than fraying string and a desperate will. 

The Spirit gives Missy a considering look, focused on where her teeth are gritted against the unnatural gravity she carries. “Am I hurting _you_?” she asks, like she’s never thought to before.

Missy purses her lips, forcing her features smooth. “Of course not.”

The Spirit’s gaze shifts up to the corners of her eyes which might be slightly pinched. “You’re lying,” she says, like she hadn’t considered that possibility either. 

“A mild inconvenience,” Missy scoffs, straightening her skirts. “Don’t go getting excited.” 

The Spirit frowns at her, more bewildered than usual. “I wouldn’t― I’m not _trying_ to hurt _anyone_!” She knots herself more tightly as though trying to limit the exposure, but all it does is focus the burn. 

“You really are a strange monster,” Missy says, honestly impressed. It’s not easy work holding even one paradox at bay and she’s got them wrapped around her like a cloak.

The Spirit sighs like she’s going to cry. But she straightens her face back to neutral so quickly Missy thinks she might have imagined it. 

“How many times have we spoken?” Missy asks, trying to focus over the sudden wave of vertigo. 

The Spirit gets a strange look like someone listening to a foreign language that they can’t quite make out. “Four times,” she says, “Or seven.” Another pause. “Possibly once.” She takes on a defensive stance, as though daring Missy to comment.

Missy just sighs and raises her hands. 

Blue eyes flicker brown, but she steps into reach, holding still as Missy makes the connection. 

Missy likes a bit of chaos. She appreciates the beauty in disaster. 

But this. This is madness. 

Completely untethered. Wildly unstable. It’s a firestorm feeding on itself. 

“Oh,” she breathes. “Oh, you dangerous thing. You’ll tear the very fabric of reality at this rate.” 

Something at the heart of the storm recoils at the thought, trying to pull itself back. But there’s no gravitational center. Nothing that could contain it. 

“Could you stop me?” the Spirit asks.

“What?” Missy has to break the contact, nearly doubling over. She manages to keep herself upright by will alone. 

“If I’m dangerous,” the Spirit muses, “I don’t think I’d be able to tell. And I don’t think he’d tell me.” Her tone suggests she has no strong feelings one way or the other, but the knots around her tighten violently. 

Missy forces her eyes up to meet the Spirit's miserable gaze. The resulting vertigo nearly knocks her to her knees. “You’d give up? Just like that?” 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” the Spirit says. “I only wanted to stay. To help.” 

Missy hesitates, completely thrown. She’s never been one to tout the Time Lord laws, but every instinct screams at her to take the opportunity. Destroy the abomination. Protect reality.

“Please,” the horror begs, and forces a chink into her own armor. “I don’t want anyone to be in danger because of me.” 

It makes Missy’s skin crawl, just looking at her. 

The TARDIS keens, and folds six dimensions tighter as though trying to shield her from herself. 

That, more than anything, stays Missy’s hands. She cocks her head, trying to listen to the muffled interdimensional song. 

“Why would _you_ protect her?” she asks the ship. “She’s poison to you.” 

The terrible, wretched thing looks horrified to hear it, but the ship just pulls her closer, weaving soothing strands through the chaotic mess of her. 

“Now _that_ is fascinating,” Missy admits, watching the timelines stitch themselves into something not even remotely resembling order. 

“I don’t want this,” the Spirit says. “I don’t want anyone to be in danger because of me. I only ever wanted to help.” 

She’s still holding herself open between planes and something shines through the nightmarish mess. A bright, burning core, so impossibly distilled it hurts to look directly at it. 

“Put it away,” Missy says, willing her eyes not to water. “If this rusty bucket of a ship can tolerate you, I can do no less.”

The blinding, shining thing is covered once more by the nightmare of errors. “You’ll help me?”

“What can I say…” Missy brushes a bit of parallel plane off her cuff. “I love a catastrophe.”

The Spirit stares at her with eyes that reflect everything and nothing. 

Missy raises her hands to the creature’s temples once more, gritting her teeth. “We’ll begin with a lesson in pragmatism.” 

* * *

Missy’s head _hurts_. It reminds her of the time she accidentally strayed past her TARDIS’ protective barrier and nearly regenerated in the raw vacuum of space. 

She ignores the Doctor puttering around, tilting her head back as far as it will go, relishing the press of hairpins into her skull. 

“Are you all right?” The Scottish brogue intrudes, harsher than usual. 

She tries to ignore it, but she can feel him staring like an unbearably bright lamp. 

“I have the most extraordinary headache,” she says. Her own voice grates in her ears. 

The Doctor scoffs. “A headache? You look like you’re on death’s door over _a headache_?” 

Missy ignores him, prodding the aching spaces like sore teeth. 

There’s a rustle and then blessed silence, followed intolerably by further rustling, moving closer. Cool fingers ghost across her forehead, insultingly gently. “Is it… It’s not the drums…?” 

Missy laughs and then grimaces as the sensation rankles. “Afraid you’ll have to put me down after all?” At the moment it feels like it’d be a mercy. 

The fingers twitch, sliding, and an overly soft palm presses in their place. “Shall I have the TARDIS check you in the medical bay?” 

She swats his hand away without opening her eyes. “I’ll not be poked and prodded like one of your guinea pigs. It’s you and your mad ship’s experimenting that’s gotten me into this!” 

“What??”

She sighs. “Still trying to pretend you have no idea what I’m talking about?”

He makes a choked, indignant sound. “I genuinely _have no idea_ what you’re talking about!” 

Missy presses the heels of her hands into her own eyes hard enough to see stars. “I’ve no patience for you just now. Either put me out of my misery or toddle off.” 

“Perhaps…” he says, and then pauses for so long she thinks he might have left after all. “Perhaps,” he eventually continues, “You’ve been in here too long. Perhaps a trip might be in order.” 

Missy frowns around her hands, trying to make that proposal make sense. “What?”

The Doctor sighs, cool air tickling down her décolletage. “Perhaps you’d like to try a trip,” he says. “Just a quick one.” 

Missy’s brows furrow into her palms and she tears them away to squint at him. “You’d let me leave the TARDIS?” 

He’s doing that odd thing he does in this body where he looks off to the side instead of directly at her. “I’d monitor you,” he says, “But yes. It wouldn’t be much of a trip just moving from room to room, would it?” 

Missy narrows her eyes further, waiting for the catch. “Why?” 

The Doctor flicks a glance her way and then off to the side again. “You’ve been better lately… And you know what a sucker I am for hope.”

Her headache is still pounding, but it moves further back, distracted by the odd flutter in her hearts. 

“You really are a fool.” The scathing insult comes out sounding nearly fond. 

The Doctor flicks a glance at her, but doesn’t look away immediately. “Everyone knows that.” 


	16. (Re)calibration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert! (Probably should have tagged that earlier, but this chapter in particular contains spoilers for pretty much all of NuWho.)

* * *

_Balance does not come naturally in eleven dimensions. But a strong enough spirit can overcome anything._

_The Universe bends, just to the point of breaking if one knows exactly how to press._

_And when one has nothing but time to learn, these things are all but inevitable._

* * *

Micky Smith | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 13 May 2006 (The Doctor’s Age: 900)

The night before Mickey Smith is lost to a parallel world, he dreams of a familiar voice and an unfamiliar song, whispering of great potential yet to be realized. When he sees his gran alive and well he knows he’s found a rare second chance and takes it in both hands.

* * *

Rory Williams (Pond) | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 29 September 2038 (The Doctor’s Age: 1,200)

The longer Rory travels in the TARDIS, the louder the whispers in the shadows grow. They sing to him of a love that will last centuries, millennia. Far longer than any human love could hope to last. 

When Rory finds himself wrenched out of time he has only moments to realize before his beloved Amy appears next to him, having given up the one thing he always suspected she loved just a bit more than him. Without hesitation. 

* * *

River Song | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 25 December 2015 (The Doctor’s Age: 2,100)

River can always hear the TARDIS. The ancient ship sings to her, carding great metaphysical digits through her chaotic mind, straightening the twisted lines into something resembling order. Something like peace. 

River knows better than to ask the ship about her own future, but when she learns of the singing towers she can’t quite keep the thoughts from surfacing. The TARDIS croons sweet nothings, and a not-quite-separate voice swears that she will never be truly lost. No matter how bleak the outcome may seem, she will never be forgotten. 

* * *

Clara Oswald | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 21 November 2015 (The Doctor’s Age: ~2,076 or ~4,500,002,076)

When the raven comes for Clara Oswald, time slows, crystallizing, and an unfamiliar voice whispers promises of debts that are still owed. 

She is granted immortality, stretched in the space between heartbeats. And she knows the gift for what it is. 

* * *

Bill Potts | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 17 June 2017 (The Doctor’s Age: ~2,100 or ~4,500,002,100)

Bill Potts swears she hears whispers in the TARDIS. Sometimes singing, low and soothing. She hears promises without words, pleas to keep her faith, to hold her heart precious and near. When she loses it without realizing, guilt swamps her, but that strange gentle song still sings to her. Even as children cower and flee from what she’s allowed herself to become, the song remains. 

She pulls the Doctor’s lifeless body back to his home and is granted a new beginning with a love once lost. The singing never quite leaves her, always strangely grateful. Always proud. 

* * *

Missy | Earth Date: Who Cares? (The Doctor’s Age: ~2,100 or ~4,500,002,100) 

As Missy lays dying in synthetic grass, something impossible flickers into view. Too sharp and grating even for her fading senses.

“Come to say goodbye?” she asks, her own breath rattling in her chest. “Such a sentimental monster.” 

There’s a pause and then the world shifts, gravity destabilizing. Red hair blurs in her failing peripheral vision. 

“I don’t know how to do this,” an impossible voice says. “I don’t know what the cost will be. But, I can't leave you here... I have to try...” 

“Try what?” Missy asks, but her voice fails on the last word. 

Just before everything drops into darkness she feels a swell of regeneration energy, drawing out her own reserves. It burns, impossible and unnatural, but she can’t turn it away. 

The Master comes back to life, screaming and alone, with a new face, new hearts, and a headache like nothing he's ever felt before. 

* * *

Ryan Sinclair | Companion-Relative Earth Date: 1 March 2020 (The Doctor’s Age: ~2,202 or ~4,500,002,202)

As Ryan, Yaz, and Graham reluctantly depart the TARDIS for the last time, Ryan holds back, looking for something he’s not quite sure how to see. A shape flickers in the corner of his eye, disappearing in the moment before he can turn.

Ryan pauses, concentrating, and tries again. One long moment passes and then ―just there― the flicker. He keeps himself from turning, speaking to the crystalline strut instead. 

“The Doctor told us to leave her. She was going to… She didn’t sound like she expected to make it back.” He takes a shaky breath, trying not to think about how mad this all is. “Can you help?” 

There’s no response for nearly a full minute and he sighs, turning to leave. 

Cold air brushes his shoulder, not quite there, but strangely comforting. “ _Always._ ” 


	17. The Doctor | 1562

* * *

_Patience, time, and a will unbreakable are all anyone needs to do anything._

* * *

The Doctor | Earth Year: 1562 (The Doctor’s Age: 906)

The Doctor wakes alone in his bed, and for the first time in centuries, he lets himself feel the loss, sharp and aching, in the space between his hearts. He knows without opening his eyes that Donna is gone because his bones no longer feel like they’re being crushed by the overlying muscles and his skull no longer feels like it’s imploding. 

It hurts more for the loss somehow, and it’s supremely unfair. All he wanted was to keep her safe and alive and now she’s worse than dead. Mangled beyond recognition. 

“So you just wake up and go right back to sulking, do you?” 

He startles, jerking upright and nearly falling off the bed. Donna is sitting next to him looking judgmental.

“Donna?!” He tenses, bracing for the backlash, but it’s barely anything. No more noticeable than a parallel world branching off unexpectedly. “What? _What?!_ ” 

Her look turns cautiously optimistic. “Bit better is it?” 

He reaches for her, tentatively at first, but there’s no blowback, no horrifying recoil. The faint staticky hum under her skin is the only indication she’s still not quite human. Well. That and the double heartbeat. 

“What did you do?” He can’t seem to keep his hands from gripping, sliding, searching for some flaw in the filter. 

Donna allows the exploration, looking distinctly relieved. “Straightened a few things up. Had a little help. Took awhile, but… Does it matter?” 

The Doctor is barely listening, flipping through his higher senses. She’s still cloaked in impossible timelines, stitched together in nothing like order, but the sharp lines are less cutting. Uncomfortable, but not debilitating. 

It hurts to look at her, but no more than staring at an overly bright light.

He feels a grin stretch his face. “You really are _brilliant_.” 

Donna blinks and then fairly beams, too bright but much more manageable. He squints slightly, but he can still see her without the stinging in his retinas. 

She ducks in, kissing his cheek, and immediately leans back, ready to bolt if necessary. 

The Doctor blinks, cheek tingling, but it’s just static and surprise. 

Donna watches him trace his cheekbone with one fingertip, still poised like she might need to jump back at any moment. “Still all right?” she asks.

The Doctor fairly yanks her into his arms. 

Still no backlash. The contact tingles, but his nerves don’t wrench out of alignment. He releases a breath he hasn’t even realized he was holding. 

“Oh, that’s… That’s so much better…” He drops his head to her shoulder, sneaking a taste, and instead of the bitter tang it’s just Donna, with a slightly metallic undertone. Easily reconciled.

Her pulse jumps slightly at the contact, but she holds him closer with a pleasant shiver.

The Doctor smiles so widely it makes a noise. 

Donna turns just enough to kiss the side of his head and her lips brush his temple, entirely by accident. The connection tingles, but it’s a pleasant shock, not a violent intrusion.

She shivers again, pulling back with a muttered, “Sorry.” But he chases the contact instinctively, nearly knocking her over in his haste to get upright. 

“Could I…?” His fingers are already hovering beside her head.

She huffs. “Do you really think I’m anyone else?” 

“No, it’s just…” He swallows, and then continues, “...I missed you…”

Donna hesitates just long enough to make him aware of how embarrassingly eager he is. “You’ll tell me if it feels… wrong… yeah?” 

“Course,” he says, awkward as well, but he’s very aware she hasn’t actually refused. His hands remain hovering so close to connecting. 

Donna seems to be considering it. “It should be fine,” she says, more to herself. 

The TARDIS hums a neutral tone. 

Donna looks him in the eye, too directly, like she can see straight through to the core of him. “We’ll stop if it hurts you,” she says.

“Course,” he says, painfully aware that he’d agree just as readily to any condition.

She pulls her hands up, mirroring his position and then pauses, sneaking an entirely unexpected kiss. He startles, blinking, but she’s already pulled back. 

“Just in case,” she says, enigmatically, but then her fingers are connecting. 

There are so many more doors than there should be, but three are immediately open. They hold strange glimpses of his own past, all from unfamiliar angles. 

In the days (weeks? years?) after the Crucible, he’d tried to forget how instinctively he circled her, drawn in by some mysterious gravity that he’d taken for friendship. But he’d followed her through planes without either of them realizing. 

And she followed him right back, slipping easily through timestreams. 

They circle eachother, caught in their own gravity. Timelines stretch between them, hopelessly tangled, but the Universe bends to accommodate. 

The Doctor walks alone. He’s always walked his path alone. 

Or so he’d thought. 

Donna's careful, avoiding his features so he can’t tell past from future. She filters her own memories through misaligned lenses, obscuring the surrounding details. But she lets him see, just for a moment, that he was never alone. Is never alone. Will never be abandoned. 

And the same goes for her.

Just past the doors, Donna holds herself carefully closed. Mental barriers seal watertight. 

It’s a different kind of unbearable, knowing he’s so close. 

"Please," he can’t help but plead for proper contact.

The mental landscape stutters, flickering doubtfully, but there’s a noticeable release in pressure that he can trace immediately to the source. 

Another pause and then a crack appears, barely noticeable, but it’s everything. A hydrothermal vent in the deepest, darkest sea. 

The Doctor hoards the warmth, fully expecting a burn, but it’s only the barest bit too warm. Like Donna herself.

It’s the first shock of a geothermal spring after months in the arctic, but it’s _fantastic_. 

The Doctor echoes the feeling automatically and her surprise accidentally widens the gap. It sets off a cycle of escalating sensation, echoing back and forth. 

Donna shivers again, but it’s her mind not her body. And he’s suddenly very aware that there’s something vast and impossible looming just beyond his available senses. It’s deeper and darker than any Time Lord mind he’s ever encountered, but there’s a warmth permeating that’s so clearly Donna. 

Cautiously, he lets his own barriers down, allowing her access to layers he’d never consider showing a human. Or most Time Lords. He unfolds through eleven dimensions, as carefully as he can manage.

Donna follows the motions curiously, reminding him of the first time she’d seen an alien butterfly (or what she called a butterfly, in spite of there being seven wings). She reaches out just as tentatively, but for fear of hurting, not for being hurt. 

The Doctor would let her burn her way through the heart of him just for the warmth, but the contact is carefully controlled. Hot, but not scalding. 

The sheer relief is nearly indescribable, folding her closer without meaning to. There’s an answering swirl, echoing sensations. 

Gravity tilts and then he’s half on his back, and she’s curling over him like she’s trying to burrow straight to his soul. His hands are still on her, clutching her close, and she’s warm and welcoming and making the most magnificent rolling motions. His hearts hammer in his chest, echoed by two of her own, reverberating four beats between them. 

After what he’s sure is far too long for her lungs to hold out, he forces himself to break the kiss, and then immediately becomes distracted, mouthing at her jaw and the space just below one ear. 

Donna breathes, “Is this all right?” and laughs when he starts nodding before she’s finished the question. 

“Oh, yes,” he says, right into the shell of her ear and she shivers with her whole body.

On an overlapping plane, one of her hands wedges between them, working his buttons open and he sneaks his own digits beneath the hem of her top, edging it higher. 

Time skips and stutters and somehow they’re stripped down without any loss of contact for the trouble. Donna presses closer in arching waves, with a dizzying feeling like it’s all inevitable. 

He kisses her with taste like desperation on his tongue and it turns metallic in his mouth, but she doesn’t seem to mind. 

Donna makes the most fascinating sounds, leaning into his touch and vibrating pleasantly at every application of fingertips, lips, and tongue. 

She’s all heat, toeing the line between hot and blistering, but it’s Donna and she’s so gentle he thinks he might shatter in the most amazing way. 

The Doctor’s head spins and it’s hard to think, but she clutches him close and whispers promises she can’t possibly keep and he lets himself believe the lies for just a moment. 

Time jumps ahead and stretches at the same time. They end up tangled together through planes. 

Donna crowds him up against the headboard in one long press of flesh and he folds in around her at impossible angles. 

It’s a jumble of sensations, ricocheting back and forth at a disorientating rate, but the physical plane is somehow a grounding element, anchoring them in their own selves. 

Urgency swells, all consuming, and just as it threatens to drown them, they shudder and shatter and the tension streams out through the cracks. 

The Doctor comes back to himself gasping in air, braced against his headboard with Donna melted over him, panting like she’s only just remembered how to breathe. 

Every point of contact is slick and overheated and the electric current under her skin is nearly quaking, but it’s perfect. 

“I think―“ he starts to say, but has to stop, clearing a suddenly hoarse throat. “I think I know what we should do for the foreseeable future.” 

Donna laughs, chokes on too much air, and keeps laughing anyway. 

* * *

They lie tangled together for moments that stretch into an eternity. 

“How long do we have?” the Doctor asks.

“Depends on how you count,” Donna says vaguely. 

“Minutes? Hours? Days?” 

Donna rolls her head against his shoulder, sighing. “Moments. Eons. Something in-between.” 

“That’s very helpful. Thanks,” he says as sarcastically as he can manage while still stroking her hair.

Her fingers curl, ticklish against his jaw. “I’m sure you’re not asking me to tell you the future.” She strokes her thumb along the sensitive skin just beneath the bone. “We wouldn’t want to set you off on another one of your fainting fits.” 

The Doctor swallows, the motion catching against her fingertips. “I won’t remember this. I won’t remember you. It’ll all be a pathetic dream… And you’re going to disappear the moment I close my eyes, aren’t you?” It’s barely a question. He knows by now how his life works. 

“Only one way to find out.” Donna shifts, leaning up and over, and presses a kiss to his mouth. 

His eyes close automatically and the bed moves. It takes him just a moment to realize, jerking upright. 

Donna is standing next to the bed, straightening a sleeve she absolutely wasn’t wearing just a moment ago. 

“Donna! What―?!” 

Donna grins at him. “Funny thing about pockets in time. You can hop in and out, if you just know the way.” She winks and the cosmos shine in her eyes. “Shall I show you how?” 


	18. Epilogue

* * *

_Memories become complicated matters when time refuses to flow in order._

_What was has not yet been._ _What will be has already long ago come to pass._ _What shall never be has always been._

_The sensation of lacking, however, is embedded in deep, far past the dermis, deeper than veins. It sits uneasily in the soul, leaking grey tones._

* * *

On the rare occasions when the Doctor sleeps, he often has strange dreams of familiar hands that trace his cheek or stroke his hair. He wakes alone with a dull ache between his hearts and an inexplicable urge to look up Elizabethan England. It’s one of his favorite periods, even if it ended up with yet another monarch putting a price on his head. He can never quite remember what it was that he did to earn the queen’s ire, but he tries not to dwell.

* * *

Companion-Relative Earth Year: 2010 (The Doctor’s Age: 908)

Amy teases him mercilessly for what she calls a “ginger obsession,” flipping her hair as she says it. 

* * *

Companion-Relative Earth Year: 2011 (The Doctor’s Age: 909)

River offers to dress up in an Elizabethan gown once, but the thought makes him inexplicably sad and she ends up reassuring him that corsets aren’t really her thing anyway.

* * *

Companion-Relative Earth Year: 2013 (The Doctor’s Age: 906 and 1,200, Respectively)

When the Doctor meets Queen Elizabeth I, hanging on the arm of his younger self, she seems… off. And not just because one of her turns out to be a Zygon. The look she gives his younger self is fond, but not quite familiar. Not quite how he remembers it. But he supposes that’s a risk of falsifying memories for too many centuries. He really should keep better track.

* * *

Companion-Relative Earth Year: 2014 (The Doctor’s Age: 2,100)

Clara’s unhealthy obsession with Robin Hood grates more than it should. Every time he catches a glimpse of her dress out of the corner of his eye he expects… something… And every time it’s not there he gets a bit more put out.

* * *

Companion-Relative Earth Year: 2018 (The Doctor’s Age: Well Over 2,200 or 4,500,002,200)

When the Fam asks to go to Elizabeth I’s coronation, the Doctor somehow misses by half a century and a full continent. She really means to look into that, but gets terribly distracted and ends up forgetting. Again.

* * *

Earth Date: 21st Century (The Doctor’s Age: Long Past 4,500,000,000)

The TARDIS rumbles, and the shadows coalesce, revealing an impossibly familiar figure. 

She flips ginger hair back over her shoulder. “This should be far enough.” 

The Doctor whirls, barely breathing, as long-locked memories shift into sudden focus. “Donna?!” 

She smiles and impossibly distant memories slot into place. “Fancy another trip to Elizabethan England?”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m also on [tumblr](https://1-of-those-things.tumblr.com/).


End file.
